


All's Well That Mends Well

by Englandwouldfall



Series: As you like it [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Fluff, Happy Ending, I'm really really sorry, Infidelity, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, parenting, running away from problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 52,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4383134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Englandwouldfall/pseuds/Englandwouldfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean knew the second he took off that he shouldn't have left, but that didn't mean he could have guessed what he'd be coming back home to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I mentioned in the last chapter of the last pointless sequel (why am I doing this?? Why? It's like an addiction) that this mini-sequel has Angst with a capital A and maybe a capital NG and S too. So just, if you don't want to deal with the ~~angst~~ I suggest skipping to chapter 4 (when it appears) or just pretending this never happened. Also, please forgive me. I was v. stressed at the time of writing this and it helped me a lot. I also promise happy endings and more explanation as to how they got to this point.

Dean knows somethings wrong before he gets home (or, at least, a place that used to be home, right now he’s not so sure), because he hasn't seen his goddamn boyfriend for nearly three months and Cas hasn't answered any of his texts for the past few hundred miles. Hell, he knew something was wrong when he agreed to help his Dad out in the first place, because he has his whole life set up with Cas and it's really fucking good, but he still said yes to this gung-ho road trip with a man who routinely pisses all over his sexuality and undermines him. They haven’t even had a proper _conversation_ for years, even if Cas standing up to him at graduation seemed to have marked a turning point; at least his Dad tries to make a vague effort, these days. Still doesn’t make up for the years of near-silence, the daddy issues and the crap that his Dad put on him for years. Dean's an idiot, sure, but he didn't think he was so much of an idiot – anymore, at least – to fuck himself over like that. 

They were kinda in a rough patch, though. Cas got overly involved in some stuff with his family and kept flying out to go see one of his brothers every fucking weekend. Dean's not great at being alone, really, and all their friends had already skipped town. Weekends without Cas sucked ass, so then he defaulted into acting like a dick when Cas did get back, because he's needy and insolent. And, well, then their nine till fives had started bleeding out into the evening, till it was more like nine till seven, with housework and cooking on top. College had kind of spoilt them both for time (even though the hours they put in daily might have been similar at some points, it was a matter of flexibility), and Dean hadn't counted on it being so difficult to be out of contact all day, and exhausted and stressed out in the evening. To have to have a self-enforced bedtime to be up at seven every damn morning. To be living for the weekend and not getting to enjoy most of those, either. 

So, things weren't great. Now, he realises that quitting his job and fucking off with John Winchester wasn't 'giving them both space' as Dean had said (to which Cas hadn't exactly responded very well to which was probably totally fair), but running the fuck away from the fact that relationships are hard work. Even relationships with your bad ass perfect best friend that you've known for years. Cue radio silence for the first few weeks of Dean's trip, before he caved and called him from outside a motel whilst his dad was asleep. Since, they've been taking again pretty regularly. Cas is the exact opposite of happy with Dean's latest life choices, and he's made that more than clear, but... they're hanging in there. Cas has always known he was a goddamn idiot, it’s just harder to take when you’re in a relationship with said idiot. 

Then the inevitable shit-storm went down with his Dad, at the exact moment that things tipped over to crisis point with the shitty long distance-thing. He hasn’t got a damn clue where John Winchester is anymore, but he’d realised he was beyond done and told Cas he was coming home. 

He got a fairly mixed reaction and then near silence. Dean knows something’s wrong. 

The key still works in the front lock, at least, which is with goddamn relief. The last few hours of no messages had half convinced him that he'd find his stuff piled outside their apartment building on the pavement, but no, he's back in their apartment, and Cas is on the sofa watching some shitty cartoon. He stands up when he hears the door open though, looking pale and a little like a deer in the headlights, but pleased too. 

"Hey," Dean says, dumping the duffle he bought upstairs onto the floor and kicking the door shut. 

"Hello Dean," Cas says, and that's enough to have Dean's heart doing that weird swooping thing he forgot happened, and then he's striding across their apartment to get his hands on those familiar hips, and eventually get his lips on that pinched frown but, mostly, he wants a goddamn hug. Fuck, but the last few months have been shit. He doesn’t have a lot of hope that it’s about to get immediately better, either, but he can at least get a hug. 

He _knows_ there's something wrong, because Cas wouldn't look so goddamn worried unless there was something wrong. He just doesn't know what yet, although he's ninety percent sure he could take a guess and he doesn't want to deal with that. He’s not entirely sure that he can deal with that. So, delaying tactics. 

Cas is still clinging onto the hug, with the usual disregard for social boundaries (not that Dean tends to think they apply to _them_ anymore), so it's easy as anything to turn the hug into a heated kiss. Plus, it's been while. Phone sex isn't the same, and they both kind of suck at it. Especially given as Dean's been so fucking cagey around his father and what with being stuck in close quarters with the guy, he feels like he’s been half pushed back into the closet. It’s not a place he particularly wants to be, and his Dad forces him into a headspace he doesn’t want to inhabit, and… yeah, he just wants to be here, with Cas. That’s all he’s really wanted for a long time now. Even though that’s not as easy as he thought it was going to be. 

He's got Cas pressed back against the sofa, shirt untucked, Cas' hands tangled up in his hair before Cas tries to put a stop to Dean going for his belt. 

"Dean," Cas says, and his stomach drops, because that's near enough a confirmation of what's wrong. Cas won't sleep with him until they've talked. He probably thinks Dean won't want to if he's said it. "I need to tell you something." 

Cas’ voice sounds different to how it does on the phone. In person, his words have more gravity. He gets the emotions that sometimes it’s easy to miss down the phone, when he doesn’t have Cas’ frown and his body language to respond to. Even so, he reckons those words would have made his blood turn cold even down the phone. 

"No, Cas, you need to fuck me," Dean says, hands still on his belt but making no move to undo the damn thing. He'll be damned if he's going to make this easy for the guy, but that doesn't mean he's going to push. Cas’ crinkled forehead creases more as he frowns. 

"I... you need to know." 

"I don't," Dean says, closing his eyes. He doesn't want to do this. He wants to wrap himself up in Cas and love and support and home, but... Instead, here they are. He’s tried. He’s driven a long way. Everything really sucks, and he just… he’d sort of hoped he was wrong; that he was just being a paranoid bastard and overthinking things, because he does that sometimes. It’s looking unlikely. It’s looking really fucking unlikely. 

"Dean," 

"Just lie to me about it, Cas," Dean says, as Cas considers him with those blue eyes. Cas can read that he already knows, and he moves away reflectively. Cas is caught between offended and hurt and guilty and... yeah. Right. Fuck. 

"That's terrible relationship advice," Cas frowns, tilting his head slightly. 

"Fine," Dean says, "Say it."

"I slept with someone else." 

"Okay," Dean says, "Can we just screw, already?"

"Okay?" Cas repeats, voice dangerous.

"Okay," Dean repeats. Having Cas say it out loud isn't as ground-breaking as it should be, but then he already knew. He knew. He doesn't like it, but he knew. It’s been lining his gut since Cas sounded all wrong on the phone after a stupid fucking argument, but that doesn’t mean he wants to talk about it. In fact, talking about it is the exact opposite of everything he would like to be doing right now.

Cas stares at him.

"I cheated on you,"

"Yeah," Dean says, "I kinda already worked that out, dude."

"Why are you so calm?"

"What, you want me to dump you?"

"No, I want you to have enough self-respect to think about it." Cas says, voice low, “Then I want you to forgive me.”

"Just driven a thousand fucking miles away from my homophobic asshole father who nearly got us both killed, to come home to my unemployment and my cheating boyfriend. All out of self-respect here, buddy. Try again tomorrow."

"You _left_."

"Don't try and justify yourself to me," Dean snaps, "I know exactly why you did it. Could probably tell you when. Not entirely sure about who, but I'm guessing not someone we know." 

"What happened with your father?" Cas asks sharply. Dean doesn’t want to talk. He didn’t drive all fucking day to yell at Cas or hash this out, he just wanted to see him. Have a few hours of feeling like everything was okay. He definitely doesn’t want to talk about the shit with his Dad. He just doesn’t.

"Gender is a sticky point," Dean says, "If it were me fucking around to make a point, I'd go female. You know I'm more leaning towards the women side, so it figures that would make you more insecure. Make you think I feel like I'm missing out on breasts or whatever. But then, I never really got your prowess with the dudes, so maybe you went dick. If so, I'm guessing you topped. Oral, depending on how pissed off you were at me at the time."

"Dean, what happened with your father?"

"Actually, giving head is too connected to the emotional stuff for you. It's like your Achilles’ heel. So, no blow jobs. How am I doing so far?"

"Dean --"

"So, the Friday night before last I'm guessing. We had that big argument right before, so you'd have had time to stew. Go for a drink on your own Friday night. Someone chats you up, and suddenly it sounds like a great fucking idea. You'd have used a condom, but you're still anal enough to have gone to get yourself checked out. Guessing you haven't got the results back yet."

"Dean," Cas cuts across him, "you said your father nearly got you killed."

"Well, that's the kicker isn't it," Dean smiles, even though there is absolutely nothing to smile about. "Cause whilst you woke up that Saturday feeling like the worst guy on the fucking planet, I woke up in hospital with a goddamn knife wound, thinking about what a dumb fuck I was, and how much I wanted to be home with you." Cas blinks at him. "And instead of letting me ignore all of _that_ tonight, you have to go and bring it all up so that suddenly I'm some kind of spineless idiot for wanting to be with you, properly, for the first time in goddamn months." 

Cas kisses him, thoroughly this time, in that usual pushy way of his. Dean is so angry at him. Cas might as well have cut him up too, but right now that's eclipsed by the fact that he's so in love with him, has missed him so goddamn much, and _needs_ him to kiss him to make him feel okay. Nothing _is_ okay and that’s mostly Dean’s fault. Not that Castiel comes out as an angel. 

They don't exactly talk much as Cas man handles him onto the sofa, disappears for a minute and comes back with lube and a condom (and Dean doesn't not want to think about that at all), and then carries on kissing him like it's the last damn time he'll get a chance to, passionate and desperate, and Dean clings back, scrabbles at clothes and skin until they're both naked and hard and out of breath. 

"Are you sure?" Cas asks, lips brushing over his chest. 

"Just fuck me, Cas." Dean sighs, shifting his hips to give the guy better access. Cas is efficient, which is a rarity as far as Cas is concerned, but it's definitely what's warranted right now. If Cas takes this slow enough that Dean can think, he's going to overthink it big time. He's going to imagine Cas with that other person. If they laughed whilst they were screwing. If Cas was quieter than he is with Dean. If they complimented each other on a job well done after. 

They haven't used condoms for well over a year, and never with Dean bottoming, so it's weird. It's not really what he wants, but it’s mind numbing and full of built up passion and rage and frustration and bereavement. He feels connected to him, even if it's just to the cocktail of negative emotions Cas is feeling right now. 

Cas usually curls up on his chest afterwards, but he seems hesitant this time, so Dean wraps an arm around him to basically force him too. Cas settles.

"I'm sorry," Cas says, thumb tracing over his collar bone. Cas doesn’t say sorry about things that often, but in this instance it’s no doubt the tip of the fucking iceberg. 

"Yeah," Dean says, "Me too."

"Is this...?" Cas asks, pausing at the angry skin on his right hand side. 

"Yeah," Dean says, a bitter thing. "Yeah, wasn't that deep. Lost quite a bit of blood. Got stitched up. Dad didn't get hurt, just me. Wasn't in hospital long."

"You were correct about the date, the drinking and the gender, but incorrect about the roles. No oral was involved, I regretted it before it had even happened and I... I didn't realise I was capable of being so spiteful."

"Huh. I'm pretty good at this guessing shit."

"You knew I was capable."

"I knew you were pushed."

"Dean," Cas says, eyes wide, "How can you be so calm about this?"

"Not calm," Dean says, breathing slowly,” I just... you deal with stuff by getting laid. I wasn't there. Figures."

"I'm not... incapable of restraint.” 

"Not saying you are," Dean says, "I'm also not prepared to sit here and defend you just cause you're feeling shitty about it"

"Technically, you are lying here and defending me," Cas says, resting a palm over the new scar to hide it from view, hand cupped enough not to touch the raw skin. "Do not get hurt again, Dean," Cas says, "And do not neglect to tell me if you are in hospital, whatever the circumstances. I don’t care whether you’ve broken a finger or are wasting staff time over a cold, you tell me if and when you are in hospital.”

“Yeah,” Dean breathes, “Didn’t wanna drop it on you over the phone. Guessing you had a similar thought.”

“I have disliked the distance,” Cas says. He’s technically curled under Dean’s arm, but he’s stiff and too formal and, frankly, this whole conversation feels pretty stilted. It’s not surprising, exactly, it’s just make it increasingly difficult to keep up his agenda of not-thinking.

"Should I add not leaving onto the list of dos and don’ts?”

Cas frowns at him.

"If it all possible, I would prefer it if we never left this apartment again."

"Cause you don't trust yourself?"

"Because I missed you." 

"Obviously not enough to keep it in your pants," Dean says. He didn’t really mean to, but Cas winces anyway, and that’s game over for denial. It wasn’t really working anyway. "You must be tired," Cas says, detangling himself and standing up. "I made up the other bed."

"Regular boy scout," Dean mutters, but wonders into their joint bedroom anyway. He's slept alone for months, he doesn't much feel like it now. Not when he has the option of sleeping curled up to Cas, his self-respect be damned. "This sucks." 

"Dean," Cas says, voice still tense, apologetic, full of a whole bunch of stuff Dean doesn't want to hear.

"Just, tomorrow. We can talk or yell or whatever tomorrow." 

"I believe there's a commonly held belief that you shouldn't go to bed angry,"

"There's a commonly held belief about going to bed with other people too," Dean returns, before he has a chance to stop himself. "We're gonna be awake a damn long time if we're waiting this one out. I'm honestly finding it hard to care right this second, and that's just messed up.... so can we just sleep?"

Cas agrees.

They don't usually hold each other when they're asleep, but they wind up wrapped up around each other as far as possible, probably because they're both fucking terrified about when the storm starts to beak, because it will and it’s sure to leave a hell of a lot of destruction in it’s wake.

*

When he wakes up the next morning after a shitty and short night’s sleep, he's feeling significantly less numb. Before, he seemed to have skipped over the initial emotional reaction, and instead crossed over to the more distant jibing. It's like he thought he'd already decided that he was going to forgive Cas, just not quite yet ... except this morning he can't remember _how_ you do that. How do you forgive someone who screwed up something special, even though they knew it was special, just cause they were angry and lashing out? Someone who ruined it on purpose. Someone who knew exactly what the hell they were doing.

Dean rolls out of bed, quickly, and makes himself coffee. Cas has made a valiant attempt to make everything clean (probably after months of living in a shit tip), but he's not all that good at it and, anyway, the prospect of bleaching and scrubbing the whole kitchen feels a lot preferable to thinking about Cas being fucked by some guy in some stranger's bed (he fucking hopes, anyway, if it was _here_ he might have to burn the whole place down). So, he wipes down the kitchen surfaces, before starting on the oven itself, and is just about to start on the microwave when Cas steps into the kitchen, face crumpled with exhaustion, as he blinks at him.

"You're cleaning."

"Ten points to Ravenclaw," Dean says, shoulders tensing slightly. 

"It's 6 am," 

"Been keeping weird hours,"

"Dean, you didn't get home till shortly before midnight. Why aren't you sleeping?"

"Dunno,"

"Come back to bed."

"I'll pass," Dean says, and heads for the microwave. He doesn't want to be close to Cas and thinking about how damn close he was with that other guy, but he can't seem to think about anything else. He preferred the exhausted denial than actually having to deal with all of this. It didn’t hurt as much.

"You're mad,"

"Gold fucking star, Captain Obvious," Dean snaps, turning round to face him. He thought he was more likely to cry about it than yell about it, but right now he's just furious. "It took you, what, nine weeks. Nine weeks, Cas. We've been best friends for five fucking years, and then you go and screw me over like that." Cas stares at him, face still crumpled with exhaustion. "And I was on the phone to you every day. Hell, we were talking more when I was away than the month before it." He's yelling. He's been home for six hours and they've already had sex and started yelling at each other. "I just never thought I'd get this kind of shit from you, Cas." Dean says, "Anyone else maybe, but not _you._ " 

Cas looks a little bit like Dean just slapped him round the face and just stands there in the sweats he was sleeping in, topless, blue eyes staring at him wide, unblinking and guilty. It doesn't help any. Cas hating himself for it isn't vindicating, it's just salt in the wound.

"Dean," Cas says, voice small, "It was stupid and I..."

"And you're sorry?" Dean prompts. "Sorry doesn't do jack. Don't you have a job to go to or something?"

"I took a day's holiday."

"Go back to bed, Cas." Dean says, turning back round to face down the microwave. He'd rather rip the plug out the wall and smash it to the ground, but he doesn't. He just cleans the damn thing within an inch of its life.

Later, when Cas has heeded his dismissal and left him alone in the kitchen, he does smash two mugs against the wall. He doesn't feel much better after.

*

Lunch is tense as fuck. Dean's not going to start a damn conversation and Cas looks like he doesn’t know how to. They probably would have both been better off if Cas had gone into work, even if he gets why he made the call. If Dean’s head was at a slightly different stage of the process it might not have been helpful for Cas to be disappearing for the whole day, but right now he just wants some goddamn space. And, hell, they’ve been there before. That’s almost their standard argument of choice.

"How's work?" Dean eventually asks, when they've been silent for a little longer than he can deal with.

"Bearable," Cas says, offering him a slight quirk up of the lips that might have supposed to have been a smile but doesn't quite make it. "Zachariah is -"

“- did you fuck here or somewhere else?" Cas stares at him, the sentence about his boss dead on his lip. "Just, gonna imagine it anyway, might as well get the details right. Was he hotter than me, or whatever?"

"That would be very difficult to accomplish," Cas frowns, "If it would help, I can detail the whole encounter in whatever level of detail you require."

"Why? Been thinking about it."

"Dean, it was the biggest mistake of my life. Of course I have been thinking about it."

"How did it go down then?" Dean asks. Cas just stares at him. "Come on, dude, tell me about your conquest. It'll be like old times."

Cas doesn't debate the semantics like he usually would, just stares at the food they both stopped eating a while back.

"This is very uncomfortable."

"My bad," Dean says, eyes narrowed, "Sorry for putting you out."

"Dean, please," Cas says, and Cas never says please like that. He's not so hot on those kinds of social niceties, and mostly he just makes demands rather than requests. They know each other too well for pleases. "I went to a bar on that Friday night,"

"Which?"

"The 'pretentious, overpriced, asshole' one," Cas says, and damn Dean has missed the air quotes. He’s missed eating lunch with Cas on their tiny kitchen table, missed Cas’ way of talking, missed Cas. He hates how shitty that makes him feel right now. "A man approached me after my second drink. I wasn't particularly polite in expressing my disinterested."

"Pissed off and brooding Castiel," Dean nods, "That's always been hot." 

"He suggested I tell him about my day."

"That's a bad line,"

"Yes," Castiel agrees, “That’s what I thought."

"So you told him about your day, huh?" Dean says, eyebrows waggling even though he fucking hates everything. Especially sleazy dudes in bars that should've left the hell alone after the first brush off. And Castiel, just a little bit, even though that’s actually the exact opposite of how he feels about the guy really, but… 

"No," Cas says, "but I later knocked his drink over when a woman pushed past me at the bar, so I bought him a replacement."

"You sure he didn't tip it over himself?"

"Dean, I was mildly intoxicated, but I wasn't utterly unaware of my surroundings."

"Can't you just tell me you were blackout drunk and don't remember a damn thing?" Dean asks, running a hand over his face. "So, he's got you talking. Then what?" 

"At some point I decided I was angry and lonely enough to accompany him back to his apartment," Cas says. 

"Good sex, at least?"

"I've been spoiled by eighteen months of sleeping with you," Cas says. "Was casual sex always that dissatisfying? I don't remember."

"Maybe," Dean says, "But, come on, give the guy a break. He has zero practice knowing what you're into. I had years of knowing you pretty intimately before I knew you _intimately_. I’m sure he tried." 

"I don't think I was particularly enthusiastic participant either," Cas frowns.

"That's what I like to hear," Dean says, "You only slept with someone else unenthusiastically."

It is pretty unusual for Cas though, who's the king of sex-no-regrets and raising the bar from 'consent' to 'real undisputed enthusiasm.' Not that he’s really surprised by the lack of enthusiasm.

"Immediately afterwards I threw up in his bathroom."

"Dude."

"He asked for my number, for reasons completely unknown given everything, and I made a quick exit."

"That's up there with Benny levels of awkward hook-up," Dean says, and he does feel slightly better which is kind of weird, actually, but it's not nearly as bad as he imagined. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say you didn't give him your number,"

"Dean," Cas says, frowning at him. 

"Could be worse," Dean says, swallowing. "I reckon I can work with it." 

"Dean, how can you say that?" Cas asks, and he looks much smaller with his shoulders bunched, looking down at his half eaten lunch. It's the kind of thing that kicks in his cheer-Cas-up instinct, because it sucks to see Cas looking so fucking dejected. Except, he's not supposed to want to cheer him up, he's supposed to want to punch him in the face. Either would make him feel better right now. Both won’t help long term.

"You could've slept with Crowley," Dean says, "Or, I don't know, been won over by some cheesy ass line about how you kinda look like a serial killer when you're drinking alone in a bar with your trench coat on -"

“- I didn't mention my trench coat."

"But you were wearing it inside, right?"

“I do not look like a serial killer," Cas settles on, because _obviously_ he was wearing his damn coat.

"Cas, you do," Dean says, "I'll prove it."

He's not sure how trying to get a picture of Cas looking angry and pissed off in his trench coat leads to them nearly screwing in the kitchen, in a way that's wholly different from last time because Cas is doing his face-caressing thing and is so goddamn sincere about it, even though five minutes ago they were fucking around and actually laughing (and, yeah, that's how it happened; Dean was laughing and Cas looked so awed by the sound that he actually smiled, and Cas hadn't smiled since Dean got back, and Cas has a damned nice smile and then they were kissing and clothes were inconvenient and Cas backed his bare ass into one of the kitchen chairs that probably isn't sturdy enough for this kind of activity, anyway).

"I understand your eagerness to get to my dick," Dean says, face mushed into the skin of Castiel's neck, "but you just kneed me in my healing stab wound."

"It’s placed very inconveniently," Cas says, tracing a circle round the area with his thumb.

"Next time I'll put in a request," Dean says, "My boyfriend would prefer it if you stuck to areas that aren't awkwardly placed for imaginative anal sex."

"If you have time to place requests you have time not to get hurt,"

"He did you the courtesy of avoiding my stomach or lungs or whatever. Be grateful."

"Yes Dean, I'm very grateful."

"I'll pass on the message next time I see the guy," Dean says, hooking his thumbs in the elastic of Cas' boxer shorts and sneaking past them. 

"You can also pass on my desire to shank him in return."

"Dude, you just said the word _shank._ How'd you even know what that means?"

"Urban dictionary states that to shank means to stab with a homemade knife." Dean stares at him. "I heard it on TV and I googled it."

"You are so fucking adorable," Dean says, "Get on my home made knife, Cas.”

"That's a terrible euphemism," Cas says, then accidentally knees his side again. Attempting to have sex on a kitchen chair apparently entails very little grace. "Oh," Cas says, "Perhaps..."

"Bedroom?" Dean suggests, even though he's still mad, fucking furious actually, because they're already near enough naked and it's going to happen anyway.

"Yes," Cas says, so then Dean scoops him up and carries him back to bed, because he can and because he wants to. "Dean, your stitches."

"Fuck that," Dean says, dumping him on the bed and letting Cas pull him down onto the bed too.

"I don't want to hurt you," Cas says, which is hilarious enough that Dean actually laughs. 

"Too late, Cas," Dean says, and Cas cuts him off with a kiss intense enough that Dean actually stops thinking, and holds him and touches him and looks at him in a way that makes it hard to believe that Cas would ever do anything that could possibly fuck them up; making it impossible for Dean to fathom a way that Cas doesn't love him.

Post-coital, he sends the picture of Cas looking awkward and dorky in the kitchen with his trench coat on to Charlie, alongside the message _Serial killer look??_ and Cas smiles again and kisses his jaw line. Charlie texts back the affirmative.

The second bout of peace lasts until the next day. It’s just denial mark two, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean wakes up feeling shitty, which isn't all that surprising. Spending time with his dad is usually a catalyst for bringing all that crap up, then he got frigging knifed, now he's got this Cas-cheating thing to deal with. Fuck. Cas cheating isn't exactly a phrase he ever really wanted to say or think about, and he wishes it was easier to push it out or his head. It’s the kind of phrase that has it’s own sense of gravity. It’s huge. It’s goddamn everything right now. 

Cas must have already gone to work, because the other side of the bed is cold. 

He feels like a worthless, pathetic piece of crap for it, but he rolls over to Cas’ side of the bed and hides his face in the pillow and lingering scent of Cas anyway. His gut hurts. 

He’s exhausted. He wants Cas to be home right now almost as much as he wants Cas to leave him alone for Dean to deal, if dealing is even possible. 

He decides to blame it on a delayed driving-hangover and stays in bed till he’s too hungry not to get up anymore. 

* 

He can’t look at Cas that evening. He just can’t. 

* 

"So, the CasDean show is back to its regular schedule?" Charlie's asks, beaming at him from his phone screen. He misses Charlie, a lot. It’s not the first time he’s thought about how much easier this whole relationship thing would be if they were both still surrounded by their friends, and how messed up that is that they need other people to be them properly. 

"If you mean we're back in the same state, yeah, we're back in business." Dean says, trying not to look like it's been three days and they've yet to do anything but have unhelpful, tense conversations and screw. The sex is good, at least, but afterwards he gets back into his funk and winds up hating himself, because not only is he the kind of screw up that ditches out on a perfectly good relationship because it's easier than working through stuff, but he's also the kind of guy who keeps sleeping with someone, infidelity be damned. Dean Winchester sucks. "The call of Lawrence was too strong." 

"Dude, you should never have left," 

"Duly noted," Dean says because, yeah, that would have been stellar. They’d be in a lot better shakes right now if he’d told John Winchester where to shove and sorted out the crap with Cas like an adult, but it’s too late now. 

Its then that Cas gets home from work, which is a lot earlier than he was expecting and probably both too soon and too late for the good of his mental health. He doesn’t know whether seeing Cas makes anything better or worse, he just knows that every damn time he looks at him he’s thinking about how much he loves the guy, how much his chest hurts and how fucking awful he feels because of Cas’ shitty actions. He still can’t work out whether he wants to yell at him or kiss him. Both, maybe. 

"Oh, hey dude," Dean says, trying not to sound like anything is wrong between them whilst not wanting to say Cas’ name. Not for any real reason, it just doesn’t help. The shape of it on his lips has been familiar and comforting for pretty much forever and right now it’s not. "Talking to Charlie." 

"Hey Cas!" Charlie says, loud enough that it carries easily across the room. "Get in the screen, dude, I've forgotten how dreamy you look." 

"Her majesty has spoken," Dean says, leaning to the side of the screen so Cas can get in the picture. They have neither touched nor spoken this morning, but that’s more because Cas got up early do the adult thing, whilst Dean is not currently doing the adult thing. He did get up, eventually, then started filling up job applications then gave up before applying, because if this keeps up… well. He doesn’t really want to think about it, but he doubts he could stay here if they can’t work this out. So he settled on staring at his laptop for a solid few hours then watching daytime reality TV. 

"I was never under her reign," Cas says, but walks over anyway. 

"You look like a proper adult," Charlie says, "I mean, except the tie because, really?" 

Normally Dean would probably laugh and fix it for him, but he's been knee-deep in his own imagination for the whole day (which, yeah, was part of the reason he called Charlie in the first place), so nothing seems all that funny. It just hurts in virtue of being something that used to inspire infection. He is so damn tired of everything being so painful and it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be letting up anytime soon. 

"This is awkward," Charlie says, "Dudes, what's wrong?" 

Cas turns to look at him and, fuck, now he can't even fob her off with a 'we're all okay' because Cas has just confirmed there’s something wrong. The fact that Castiel cannot in fact read his mind and isn’t exactly socially fluent has always been irritating, but now it just makes him feel tired. Goddamnit. 

"Uh," Dean says, glancing up at Cas. "I'm taking you off video and speaker," Dean says, "Give me a sec..." Dean says, then he's walking to his old bedroom and shutting the door behind him, Charlie still talking in his ear. "Hey," 

"What's happening, Dean?" 

“It’s pretty bad,” Dean says, and he chokes on the words, and this really, really fucking sucks. 

* 

He talks to Charlie for a good thirty minutes then spends another fifteen minutes alone in his old room, before he finally makes it out into their communal space. Cas is sat on the sofa, knees drawn up to his chest, with his shirt and tie still on. He looks fucking miserable, but like he’s trying his best not to do so (probably because he doesn’t feel he has a right to do so, given this misery is self-created). The TV’s set to the news, but Cas doesn’t look to be actually paying attention. 

"I suppose she hates me," Cas says, when he finally speaks. 

"Didn't tell her about that," Dean says, and heads to the coffee machine. Instead, he told her about how crap things had been before he left (which he'd skimmed over before because the running away from problems included both physically running away and pretending they weren’t happening to Charlie and everyone else over the phone) and about how much the long distance thing sucked, and getting hurt and his Dad not turning up at the hospital for two days and how he hasn't told Cas that yet. He doesn't really know if he could say the words 'Cas slept with someone else' out loud, to another person, without crying and he really fucking hates crying. 

Cas looks at him. 

"I thought you valued Charlie's advice," 

"Yeah," 

"Are you going to talk to Sam?" 

"Nope," Dean says, popping the p. 

"Why?" 

And then, course, he's pissed off again. He's pissed because Cas made some dumb mistake and that mistake has fucking consequences, and for all that Cas is apologising and wondering around like a kicked puppy, he still doesn't seem to get the _magnitude_ of those consequences. He doesn’t get that this isn’t _just_ about them, just like nothing’s ever been just about them. Hell, if it was _just_ about them he wouldn’t have left in the first place and if it was _just_ about them Cas wouldn’t have spent every damn weekend playing family councillor to his shitty brothers; they might not be in this mess. Neither of them are exactly blameless, but, fuck, they don’t exist in a vacuum. Cas’ dumb one night stand doesn’t just effect _this_ in their apartment in Lawrence, Kansas. That’s not how any of this works. 

"I want you in my life, Cas," Dean says, "Hell, I want you _for_ life. Now right now I dunno how the hell that's gonna work, but I sure as hell know that Sam won't forgive you for this. Your family aren't my biggest fans, and my Dad aint gonna welcome you in his life any time soon, so Sam and Bobby are all we've got. I'm not screwing with that, man, not unless we're too far gone to keep swinging." 

"Is that a possibility?" 

"We haven't had a damn conversation since I got back, Cas. We're balancing on a fucking knife edge." 

"We've talked." 

"We've talked about you, maybe," Dean snaps, "We ain't talked jack about me." 

"I... Dean, you should talk to someone about this." 

"No, man, because people aren't gonna get it. I don't want Charlie hating on you,” Dean says, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He doesn’t bother offering Cas one. He’s too angry to do nice things for Cas right now, even if it feels unnatural. 

“So, you’re intending to deal with this entirely on your own?” 

“Man, you should’ve thought of that at the time,” Dean snaps, then he takes his coffee back into his old bedroom and spends the next few hours staring at the ceiling and thinking about how much he hates fucking everything. 

He sleeps in the other room that night. 

* 

He feels incredibly fucking guilty when Cas comes back from grocery shopping on Saturday, because given Cas is the only one employed and actually doing something with his life right now, Dean should probably have gone ( he just _can’t_ ), but mostly because he’s spent the whole two hours hypothesising about what’s going to happen if they break up. 

He didn't mean to, but that doesn't mean he hasn't half-heartedly formulated a plan for what happens if they can't save anything; obviously, they can't stay living together. They just can't. Dean's pretty sure neither of them will even stay in Lawrence, although Cas might consider it because of his job. Dean would head back to Sioux Falls to take stock, maybe go visit Sammy for a week (if Sam has the time, Dean's pretty sure college has been hectic lately), and then have to work out what the fuck his life is going to be about if it’s not about the CasDean show. 

“I bought steak,” 

“There is a God,” Dean says. He hasn’t moved from the sofa since Cas left. Honestly, he hasn’t really done anything since he got back. He didn’t submit any of the job applications he’s filled in. He’s probably taken the ‘make sure you get plenty of rest’ thing the doctor told him a little too seriously, but there were a couple of days he just couldn’t get up. Sure, he managed to force himself out of bed before Cas got back from work just because the last thing they need is Cas’ crucifying himself with guilt over kick-staring one of Dean’s bad-periods along with everything else, but it’s getting more difficult to keep his game face on every day. It’s been a long time since he’s felt this hollow. 

“And I spoke to Charlie,” 

“Huh?” Dean says, sitting up to look at him. He looks miserable, but then he’s looked miserable pretty much the whole time since he got back. It’s not exactly a surprise. It still hurts, which is damned annoying. 

“She has assured me she doesn’t hate me,” Cas says, “Although I doubt she is particularly pleased. She says you should call her later.” 

Dean doesn’t really know how to respond to that, except to gape at him for a few minutes. It’s actually quite a Cas thing to do to take a hit for Dean’s sake, but it’s all tangled up in the fact that this is Cas’ screw up in the first place, and that it’s probably guilt that’s pushing him towards it. Punishing himself for no good reason. Dean swallows. He’s not actually entirely sure he wanted Charlie to know for his own shitty selfish reasons; he doesn’t really have any intention of walking out on this and he’s not sure he needs anyone judging for it because, well, if he wasn’t him he’d sure as shit tell him to head for the exits. 

“She pissed I didn’t tell her the whole story?” 

“She said she thought you were being very mature,” Cas says, “She seemed surprise.” 

“Huh,” 

“Here,” Cas says, picking up his phone where Dean abandoned it on the kitchen table and bringing it over. He frowns as the screen lights up. “You have six missed calls from your father,” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, “Those are from the past couple of days I just… haven’t cleared the notifications.” 

That’s code for him being too emotionally saturated to even really look at his phone, let alone respond to anything. He’s got six unanswered messages from Sam, too, the latter of which sounded pretty pissed off ( _stop screwing your boyfriend and answers your phone, Dean_ ), but he just… he can’t. He can’t. 

“Why is he trying to contact you so purposefully?” 

“Didn’t exactly tell him I was leaving,” Dean says, and Cas hovers in his space and frowns. “He, uh… took him a couple of days to visit me in hospital. Told me he had stuff to sort out when he finally showed. So I figured, fuck him, and took off. Spent a couple of days in a town nearby cause I wasn’t exactly supposed to be discharged yet and cause driving hurt like a bitch, then I started heading back. Haven’t exactly spoken to him.” 

“He didn’t visit you in hospital,” Cas repeats, voice stormy. 

“He did,” Dean says, “It just… took him a while. Then he made some comment ‘bout how he thought I’d have told you where I was and you’d have flown out, given we had such a ‘stable relationship’ or something, I dunno. He was kind of a dick about it, anyway. And given you were being kinda cagey I was already thinking, that you’d maybe… well, you know. So he picked a bad time to pick at us. Not that he _stopped_ picking at us the whole damn time,” Dean sighs, closing his eyes again. “I mean, he _respects you_ since that whole thing with graduation, it’s just me.” 

“Dean,” 

“Think he buys into that gender roles thing where there has to be one dude in a relationship, and cause you stood up for me suddenly I’m the chick. But, shit, I dunno what he’d do if I was with someone who was kinda camp, cause he sure as hell can’t deal with that.” 

“We should talk about this,” 

“What’s there to say?” Dean asks, “I’ve had my Dad implying I’m a massive fucking disappointment and that I’m not man enough anymore, and that Mom wouldn’t like the fact that I’m _happy with a dude_ and that, clearly I’m not that happy, or else I wouldn’t have agreed to help in the first place, for _months_. And then he doesn’t give enough for a shit about me to comprise he’s fucking mission when I’m in hospital, and then I drive a thousand miles back to my boyfriend and, hey, apparently he’s _right_ about most of that, too.” Dean’s voice cracks. “Because I’m that much of a _disappointment_ that you go ahead and…” 

He wasn’t really expecting to cry. He thought he’d gotten over the worst of the emotional reaction by yelling and the days wallowing in his sweats in their apartment, but now he’s actually fucking crying. 

Cas has seen him cry once and they were both really drunk at the time. He’d just had a panic attack. It was a week after the stuff went down with Alistair, when he’d just come out to John Winchester and had him pack his bags and take off to the other side of the country. He might have been doing pretty badly in college, too, and he was really frigging drunk. That had been bad enough. 

“I am not disappointed in you,” Cas says, stepping forward into Dean’s space and brushing away one of the tears. His hands stay cupping his left cheek. “I am incredibly disappointed in myself.” 

“I’m so fucking humiliated,” Dean says, and he thinks he means both crying right now and leaving to help his Dad to have it thrown back in his face, and Cas cheating on him. All three are plenty humiliating. 

“Dean, if I’d been _thinking_ …” 

“That doesn’t cut it, Cas,” Dean mutters, another tear spilling out from his eyes. “It just doesn’t,” 

“I’m aware,” Cas says, and Dean rests his forehead against Cas’ chest, and Cas wraps his arms around his back, and they stay like that for a long time. Long enough for Dean to be done crying, but not long enough that the humiliation dissipates, or for any of it to stop hurting or stop mattering quite as much. 

“We should put the groceries away,” Dean says, eventually. “Don’t want those steaks to go a-wasting.” 

Cas doesn’t bring up the crying, just follows his lead. 

He calls Charlie later. She doesn’t tell him they should break up like he’s expecting her to. He doesn’t cry again, but it’s a close run thing. 

* 

"What are you thinking about?" Cas asks, probably because Dean's been stood looking at the sideboard behind the sink (gross, by the way) for at least ten minutes, hands submerged in washing up liquid water, even though the plate he's holding was done a while back. Besides, communication isn’t exactly something they’re doing very well at the moment. Dean’s mostly keeping everything locked up in his head and his chest, because it doesn’t seem like it’ll be all that constructive to tell Cas about _exactly_ how he’s feeling at any given moment. He doesn’t need to know how betrayed he feels every time Cas hands him a cup of coffee with a valiant attempt at a smile, or how much he wants to throw the guys’ laptop out the goddamn window on moments when he’s particularly pissed, or how the next second he just wants to kiss him. It’s all bullshit and none of it’s worth talking about. It won’t change anything. 

"Dude, really?" Dean asks, jerking himself into motion. "That's like barely an acceptable questions post sex." Not that they're having sex right now. They’re not even sharing a bed. He’s pretty sure that Cas hasn’t so much as touched him since the crying incident, and they haven’t kissed for days before that. It’s like a physical ache, but they both know their relationship well enough to know that they’d continue sleeping together and pretending everything was okay if they could and that doesn’t actually help anything. It just makes everything more complicated than it already is. It’s already a massive goddamn mess. "Anyway, you don't wanna know." 

"I asked, that entails I want an answer." 

"Thinking ‘bout whether Bobby would let me move back in with him," Dean says, even though the words even taste wrong when he says them out loud. "If Ellen gave me a job at the Roadhouse till I worked out what I was gonna do next. Maybe pick up a couple of mechanic jobs. Save some money up for Sam." 

Cas is silent for a few long moments. 

"Is this hypothetical?” Cas asks, voice deliberately controlled and emotionless. Too frigging deliberate. 

"Hopefully," Dean says, then washes up the last two dishes in the silence, "You said you wanted me to have enough self-respect to think about breaking up with you but, I gotta say, this don't feel like self-respect." 

"Dean," 

"I said you didn't wanna know," 

"What can I do?" 

"That's just it, Cas, I don't know. I don't know what you can do. And I just... All this fucking mess over sex. We're talking one goddamn orgasm here, but I can't get it out my head. Why should I care? Why can't I just forget about it?" 

Cas just stands there in the kitchen and watches him. 

“It’s not getting any better,” Dean says, putting the last plate in the drying wrack and pulling the plug out of his sink. Cas doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing really to say, so Dean shuts himself in his old bedroom again and does absolutely nothing until it’s late enough that he can justify going to bed. 

* 

He needs to get the hell out of dodge. For a start, his secret (ish) alcohol stash has diminished to the point that he can no longer start the day with a measure of whiskey, which is technically fine because his version of starting the day is currently at about 3pm and that’s not that far of five PM, so drinking is completely legit. He hasn’t left the apartment for four days and that was just to the nearest place that sold milk. He hasn’t seen anyone that wasn’t Cas or the pizza delivery guy for a week. He hasn’t had an organised social interaction with anyone that wasn’t Cas since he walked out on his Dad in the hospital and he’s self-aware enough to know that all of those things are pretty unhealthy. Maybe he feels like shit because Cas slept with some dude at a bar and because his Dad’s kind of a bastard, but staying in and wallowing isn’t inspiring him to feel any better about anything. He’s just making everything worse by rotting in their apartment and dwelling on it all the damn time. What Dean really needs, is a life. 

So, he’s showered, dressed in public-appropriate clothing and looked in the mirror for just long enough to establish that he looks like shit. He _looks_ like an unemployed, useless screw up who’s going through a break-up (which he hopes to God he isn’t), but there isn’t a damn thing he can do about that. It’s just the way it’s going to have to be. 

“You’re going out,” Cas says, as he steps out of his bedroom into their main room. Cas still hasn’t changed out of his work gear. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the gaze pointed in Dean’s direction, but he’s not about to dissect it about now. He needs one night that isn’t completely about _Cas_ so he stops feeling so crazy. 

“Yeah, well, I need to get the fuck out of this apartment.” 

Cas probably would have told him he needed to leave the apartment days ago if he wasn’t so fully scared of pissing Dean on further. Not that Dean’s yelled for a few days, but Cas’ awareness that he’s walking on a knife edge has increased exponentially since their conversation in the kitchen. It’s actually made everything worse, because the guy is being so fucking careful and it’s the exact opposite of how they’ve always been around each other. Everything is unnatural and stilted and _wrong_. 

“Where are you going?” 

“Someplace with whiskey,” 

“Are you driving?” 

“Nah, I’ll walk. Need some air,” Dean says, unhooking his leather jacket from the hook and pulling it on. He hasn’t really looked at Cas, but he does now. Right now he doesn’t feel anything at all. Just numbness. It’s a damn sight better than the rest of it, so he’ll take the numbness. 

“Enjoy your… air.” Cas says, looking back down on his laptop and looking a little bit like he’s about to start crying. Cas doesn’t cry though, not ever, and Dean just needs to _stop_ thinking about him for five frigging minutes. So he just pretends not to notice how dejected Cas looks and pockets his house key. 

* 

Dean’s not entirely sure why he isn’t drunk, because he certainly drank enough. Apparently, his misery just absorbs alcohol (that, and he’s probably been drinking a lot more than he realised whilst with his Dad, and then afterwards too), because he feels completely fucking sober. Well, maybe not completely, but sober enough that everything still sucks, and sober enough that he’s still stuck in his head. 

“Dean,” Cas says, when Dean pushes open the door to their apartment and steps inside. He’s sat on the sofa in the dark, illuminated only by the TV, and it’s one of the most pathetic images Dean’s seen for a while, which is saying something, given they’ve both been pretty pathetic since he got back. They’re both pitiful. He’d be ashamed of how tragic their behaviour’s been if everything wasn’t so crap. “You’re home,” 

“You weren’t expecting me to be,” Dean says, slowly. It at least explains why Cas looked so miserable at his exit, and why Cas is watching what looks like Disney at two AM, even if it really goddamn sucks that they’ve got to this point. “Thought about it. There was this blonde chick who was pretty cool. Think she might have been one of Charlie’s friend’s friends, cause she was kind of familiar. Final year at KU. Majoring in Literature. Likes Led Zeppelin cause it reminds her of her dad.” 

“Dean,” Cas says, again, only this time it sounds more pained. 

“Doesn’t feel great, right?” Dean says, “Now suppose you stayed up watching Lilo and Stitch all night and I didn’t come home. Or I said I’d fucked her in the bar toilet just to piss you off.” 

“You’ve made your point,” Cas says, icily. 

“Who’s saying I didn’t do it? Been gone for a while. Could have been anywhere.” 

“I trust you.” 

“You know how fucking privileged you are to have that?” Dean says, shrugging off his jacket and taking another step in the room. He’s back to angry again. Being in a dive bar with a bunch of strangers he definitely had no interest in even talking to didn’t help at all. He didn’t even manage to flirt with the frigging bartender, even though she was hot and gave him a drink on the house, and flirting isn’t exactly something he’s ever considered before anyway. He wasn’t really aware he knew how _not_ to flirt. Not that that’s what he’d _intended_ to do, exactly, he just needed to think about something else and flirting probably would have helped. Instead, he’s pretty sure he hasn’t had such concentrated and uninterrupted thoughts about all of it since he was driving back across state lines debating whether or not Cas had actually done it. “Maybe it’d be better if we were even.” 

“You’re intoxicated,” 

“Pissed, you could say,” Dean says, walking over to the kitchen to get a glass of water. “I’ve changed my mind,” Dean continues, wondering back over to the sofa, “I think, if I was trying to really get to you, I’d go for a guy.” 

“You have made your point.” 

“If I could not be in love with you right now,” 

“Dean, if you are going to break up with me I would appreciate it if you just did it, instead of hanging it over me.” Cas says, voice breaking slightly, and Dean is just _not_ expecting it. Not at all. He’s pretty sure he sobers up almost instantaneously, and he’s left just blinking at him with Disney playing in the background. 

“Cas,” Dean says, swallowing. “Castiel,” 

“Excuse me,” Cas says, then he standing up and heading for the bedroom door. 

He gives it a few minutes before following him, because he’s frozen and trying to talk himself out of following him, but he just can’t. He can’t just leave it like this. He can’t let Cas think that’s what he wants, or that he’d really hang something as huge as that over him, or that he’d get revenge, or that he doesn’t still want this work out more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life, or that he’s not just saying things like that because he’s hurting and he’s lashing out. Not even for a couple of hours. 

“Cas,” Dean says. He hasn’t been in their bedroom for a few days. It’s a fucking tip, but he barely registers that because Cas is standing in the corner of their room with his arms folded over his chest. He looks fucking gutted. He looks infinitely worse than he did when his Mom didn’t turn up for graduation. Like he just screwed up a test and some school banned them from teaching sex ed and caught in the middle between Michael and Lucifer and like Dean’s said something dumb and prejudiced all wrapped up in one look of total fucking wretchedness. “Cas, _never._ ” 

Cas unfolds his arms and looks up at him, arms hanging lamely at his sides. 

Dean hugs him. Instantly, he has Cas’ gripping hold of his shirt, stepping forward to rest his forehead on his shoulder, shaking. More dry sobs than anything, actually, and Dean does not want this to be real. He doesn’t like Cas being upset. Not like this. He grabs hold of Cas’ hips, pulls him closer so there’s no space left between them. 

“I need you, Cas.” Dean mutters, and then he’s making up for the days of not touching, tracing his shoulder blade, arms, back. Pressing his lips into the crook his neck. “Not giving this up, gonna be okay, Cas, we’re gonna be okay. Need you.” 

Cas tightens his grip on his t-shirt. 

“It’s gonna be okay, Cas,” Dean says, “We’re gonna be okay. We’ll get past this. I just want you. I just…” 

“Dean,” Cas says, deep and far too fucking earnest, and then they’re kissing and it’s been like _a week_ but it still feels like forever, and Cas is still shaking, and he loves him so goddamn much he’s not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do with it. “You’re drunk,” 

“I’m also completely fucking in love with you and I don’t… Cas I don’t even know how I would start to lose you, man, I can’t do it. I shouldn’t have left. I should’ve just…Cas, give me something here. You wanna fix this, right?” 

“Of course, Dean.” 

“Okay,” 

“Okay,” 

“Okay,” Dean says, and thumb running over his bicep, bringing their forehead together, “I’m not saying I know where to start, I just…” 

“It’s late,” Cas says, leaning forward to kiss him, “Stay here.” 

“Yeah, like hell am I letting go of you right now,” Dean says, “This was a shitty evening.” 

“It was not ideal.” 

That shouldn’t make his stomach flip over, but it does anyway, because Cas has pretty much always had the effect on him. Dean mutters his name, kisses his bottom lip, runs his hands through his stupid bedhead, nearly manages an actual smile. 

“Would sex help right now?” Cas asks, and Dean nearly chokes. “Was that inappropriate? My Dean skills are a little rusty and I have been awake since six AM.” 

“Your Dean skills have always been awesome,” Dean says, “No complaints there.” 

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Cas says, frowning, “Can we…?” 

“Cuddle?” Dean suggests, “Hell yeah.” 

Cas’ expression softens slightly. 

“We can talk tomorrow,” 

“I’m gonna actually send off the job applications tomorrow,” 

“I wasn’t aware you hadn’t,” Cas sighs, stepping forward to pull Dean’s t-shirt over his head. Dean lifts his hands up to oblige, before reaching forward to start on Cas’ buttons. 

“My heads kinda screwed up right now,” Dean says, “Don’t mean I get a free pass on treating you like shit.” 

“I think, given the circumstances, it does,” Cas says, kicking off his slacks. Dean follows suit with his jeans, then lets Cas pull him towards their bed. 

“Just perpetuates the crappiness,” Dean says, burying his face in Cas’ shoulder. He can’t give this up. He just can’t do it. 

“Crappiness,” Cas repeats, finger’s skating up his flesh to pause just below his neck. “I’m still not entirely sure why you’re attempting to forgive me.” 

“That’s because I aint the only one in this bed with self-worth issues,” Dean says, “And cause you wholly underestimate how much better you make my life.” 

“I missed this the most,” 

“Talking about our various issues?” 

“Being close to you,” Cas says, so then of course Dean has to lean forward and kiss him. They fall asleep between one kiss and the next, both clinging onto each other, and wake up face to face far too late on Saturday morning. 

It certainly beats waking up alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you couldn't tell between all the many updates, I have been both no longer busy and very bored. Hopefully I won't be quite as bored for the rest of this week, but I'm trying to get this story uploaded fairly swiftly so we can get all the angst resolved ;)
> 
> (Obviously, it is very much not over yet)


	3. Chapter 3

Saturday winds up pretty good and even Sunday is okay, but then it’s Monday and by the time Dean’s woken up Cas has already left for work and Dean’s got hours to kill until he gets back. Maybe the shit storm on Friday night knocked loose some of the angry-stubborn-hurt and reminded him why he hasn’t already done a runner (he loves Cas, he loves what they have, he loves their life here. Those things are _worth_ something. That’s what they’re supposed to be fighting for, here, Dean’s dignity be damned), but that doesn’t mean he feels any less abandoned and shitty right now. It’s illogical. Cas has to go to fucking work. Still doesn’t feel great. 

He’s _trying_ to get things in better shape, though, so he’s been intermittently texting Cas about the dumb kind of crap they usually text about. He’s slow at replying because he’s got to avoid Zachariah’s creepy omnipotent act (and, seriously, that guy needs to get a life), but it’s better than no communication whatsoever. It’s also about the most his phone has been used in goddamn weeks, because Dean’s a screw-up who can’t handle talking to anyone right now. 

He has applied for two jobs that he’s definitely not going to get this morning, which is progress. They’re going to fix everything. It’s all going to be fine. 

_There’s someone at the door. You ordered something or can I ignore it?_

_Answer the door, Dean._

_Only because you replied so damn quickly_ Dean types back, dropping his phone onto the sofa before heading to the front door. He’s barely dressed, there’s a bottle of cheap bourbon next to the laptop where he’s been staring at job applications and he’s sure to look just as crap as he had done last time he looked in the mirror, but it’s probably just the mail guy anyway. They can judge him however they want. They don’t know his life. 

It’s not the mail guy. It’s fucking Bobby. 

“Well you look like shit,” Bobby comments, stepping past him and into the apartment, which looks about as crap as Dean does. It’s slowly become a representation of how much of a mess his life is, because as soon as the manic-cleaning-phased ebbed away he’s been struggling to give a shit (and Cas has always been rubbish at cleaning, apart from the dishes which he’s weirdly anal about). There’s stuff everywhere, the recycling hasn’t been taken out, he needs to vacuum stat and there’s a stack of clean dishes that need to be put away. Mostly, though, its’s the bourbon-in-the-middle-of-the-day thing which he didn’t exactly want Bobby to be seeing. Hell, he’s been making an effort to hide how much he’s drinking from Cas and Cas knows everything about him. 

“Uh,” 

“Do I look like a ditchable prom date to you?” Bobby asks, turning around to fix him with a glare. Calling Bobby was pretty high on his list of things to do the second he felt a little more human, but he just… hadn’t got to it yet. 

“Sorry, Bobby.” 

“No smart assed response?” 

“I’m all out,” Dean says, swallowing, “Why are you here?” 

“Looking at your apartment, I’m here for a damn intervention,” Bobby says, “Your boy dropped me a line that you were back in Lawrence, which is the first I’ve heard for a damn month.” 

That certainly gets his attention. He hadn’t really registered that he hadn’t _told_ Bobby he’d made it back to Lawrence (he remembered a conversation in which he told Bobby he’d split with John Winchester, no further details, and Bobby telling him he probably shouldn’t accept a particularly warm welcome from Cas after everything… but he’d already had a pretty good idea about Cas going home with the guy from the bar, so just changed the subject; he can’t remember talking to Bobby since then, but he hadn’t realised it had been such a long time).He’s also not sure how he feels about Bobby getting in contact with Cas. They’ve done it before about dumb crap like Christmas presents and Sam’s defaulted to messaging Cas if Dean doesn’t answer for a while, but that was _before_. 

And Cas could have told him he’d been in contact with Bobby, too. It wouldn’t have fucking killed him to mention it. Maybe that would have been enough to snap Dean out of his funk and just _call him_ and then Bobby wouldn’t have come here and walked in on a display of how much of a mess he is right now. Fuck. 

"You got Cas spying on me now?" 

"You drop off the radar I'll take any spy with some frigging information." Bobby says, "You gonna tell me what's wrong, boy, or we gotta keep up this foreplay for another half an hour?" Dean doesn't say anything. He doesn't really know what to say. "I told you when you left you were screwing up.” 

"You hitting me with an I told you so now, Bobby. Really?" 

"Your brother says you haven't been answering him, either." 

"You tell him I was with Dad?" 

"No," Bobby says, but he doesn't sound too happy about it. It hadn’t been too difficult to talk him into not telling Sam about it at the time, because he would have flipped out, but the longer he was there the less Bobby seemed keen on keeping up the pretence that he was just in Kansas with Cas as per the status quo. "This about Cas?" 

“You want some caffeine? A beer?” 

“You’re drinking enough beer for the both of us, by the looks of it.” 

Dean takes that as a yes for coffee because it means he can get out of his gaze and head to the coffee machine. He didn’t _mean_ not to call Bobby or Sam. He hasn’t talked to Charlie since the phone conversation where he nearly cried and a couple of text messages where he assured her he was still kicking (and that they were still hanging on in there, relationship wise). Benny checked in a couple of times and Dean managed to respond to those as if everything was normal, but that’s about the extent of his social contact since he got back to Lawrence. 

He needs to talk to Sam, but he doesn’t know that he can keep his shit together for long enough to have a damn conversation. He’s not going to tell him about their Dad and he has no intention of telling him about the situation with Cas. Sam will ask him why he sounds like he’s had his insides cut out by a blunt spoon and Dean won’t be able to give him a decent answer. It’s better to let Sam think he’s so distracted by his fucking domestic bliss that he’s been slack on the calling. Sam’s busy too. He’ll buy it. 

“Sorry I didn’t call,” Dean says, after he’s made two strong cups of coffee and passed one over to Bobby. Hell, he needs the caffeine for the rest of this damn conversation. “Things haven’t been uh, ideal, lately.” 

“Your old man called me. Said he hasn’t been getting through either.” 

“Didn’t much feel like talking to him,” 

“Told me why you split up too, Dean.” 

“We gotta go through this?” Dean asks, because his throat hurts. He wasn’t expecting a frigging ambush today and, yeah, he knows Bobby just _cares_ about him, but he doesn’t know _why_ when he feels this shitty. When his own goddamn father won’t visit him in hospital, why the hell is Bobby driving halfway across the damn country because Dean won’t answer the phone? “The man’s obsessive. That’s not exactly a newsflash. I’m fine.” 

He picks his phone back up on the way to flicking his laptop shut and putting the bourbon back in a cupboard, just because it’s the elephant in the room and he doesn’t really want to talk about it. He has another message from Cas, dated a few minutes ago, saying he’s on his lunch break. It’s late for lunch but then Zachariah has always been kind of a slave driver, so it’s not surprising. 

_you knew about this??_ Dean sends Cas, because he’s just registered that Cas told him to answer the door and because Bobby is apparently in contact with Cas. If he’s organised some stupid fucking intervention with Bobby he’s going to be _beyond_ pissed off. You give a guy some warning before you invite their father figures round. You just do. 

“You ain’t exactly giving me a good reason to believe you,” 

“Believe me, don’t believe me,” Dean says, drinking more coffee. “I’m not talking about it.” 

_About what?_ Castiel replies. 

_Bobby_ Dean types back, looking up to meet the Bobby’s gaze. He just feels so goddamn tired. 

“You think we’re gonna let you hibernate down here, pickling your damn liver and feeling sorry for yourself because life sucks? That aint how family works, boy, now suck it up.” He doesn’t get time to digest that titbit before his cell starts ringing in his hand. “That Castiel?” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, swallowing, then picks up. 

“I don’t understand,” Cas says, in lieu of saying hello. 

“Bobby’s here,” Dean says, glancing up at him. Bobby’s watching him and Dean knows full well that he’s trying to read his body language and work out what’s going on. Now he’s even more aware of his shoulders tensing up and the frown pulling at his lips. Goddamnit. 

“Did you tell him about..?” 

“No, Cas, I told you I wasn’t gonna do that.” 

“Then why is he at our apartment?” 

Bobby is still watching him, so he steps into his bedroom before he continues. 

“I’d have thought you knew considering you’re such buddies, apparently,” Cas doesn’t say anything and Dean can practically _see_ the expression of crumpled confusion. “Bobby’s here because I haven’t been answering the phone to him or Sam and apparently you told him I was back in Lawrence.” 

“You haven’t spoken to Sam?” 

“Missing the point, Cas.” 

“Bobby Singer has been ‘checking in’ since you… left. Last message I responded that it was good to have you back.” Cas say, voice still tilted in confusion. And, well, that whole sentence sort of hurts. Dean forgets how good a man Bobby is more days of the weeks; to be keeping an eye on Cas whilst Dean was busy fucking up both of their lives… yeah. Bobby is just wholly and undoubtedly good. 

“Well that’s hilarious,” Dean says, “What _exactly_ has been good about having me back?” 

“Dean, I only have another minutes of lunch. I would appreciate it if we didn’t argue about this.” 

“Would you now?” 

“Dean,” 

“What the hell do you want me say, Cas?” Dean demands, stepping round their bedroom (just as much of a mess as the rest of their apartment, but at least they’ve been back in the same bed since their conversation on Friday night). Bobby is next door and can probably hear the whole damn argument, but Dean's too worked up and angry to give a damn who hears. 

“Something constructive would be a bonus at this point. At the very least, I would like you to say something that isn’t deliberately inflammatory in order to get me to argue with you.” 

“This, right here, isn’t what I signed up for when I entered this thing.” 

“Me neither, Dean,” Cas says back and, huh, the guy’s actually irritated. Dean’s not sure whether that’s a step up from the wounded-puppy act he’s had since he got back, because on the one hand it’s possibly progress but on the other hand it has him instantly seeing red. How _dare_ Cas be pissed off when he’s the one who set this whole damn thing alight. This is Cas’ fault. This is Cas’ fuck up. He doesn’t get to be mad about however the hell Dean chooses to deal.

He must also look ridiculous. The guy only called because he was on his lunch break, now he's sat in some deli cafe yelling down his phone. He must look like he's off his meds in his trench coat and the stormy expression Dean knows he's wearing.

“ _What_ did you just say?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re fucking _mad_ at me. After the shit you’ve pulled you’re actually _mad_ at me.” 

"Dean," Cas says, voice now defeated more than anything else. "I have to go back to work." 

"Yeah, whatever, Cas. Fuck off back to your cushy desk job." 

"I'm already late." 

"Sorry for being such a damn inconvenience. And also, fuck you." 

"Do I need to pick up anything from the shop on the way home?" Cas asks, voice back to the deliberate calm that Dean hates most of the time it appears, because it means Cas is either judging him or choosing to push him out for whatever reason. Now, it’s a special kind of irritating because Dean wants him to _yell back_. He’s itching for a fight and Cas knows that full well and is rising above it like the self-righteous douchebag Cas has always been. He’s also probably right, which is even more annoying. The fact that they’ve seemed to wordlessly agree not to sleeping together probably wasn't a good idea, actually, because he's got sexual frustration layered on top of regular frustration, and it's extra bad because angry Castiel has always been kind of a turn on. God fucking damnit. 

Also, they’re such a married couple ending arguments with goddamn domestic requests and that _still hurts._

"Uh, some mince maybe," Dean says, "I'll make tacos or something. I’ll text to you if we need anything else.” 

"Okay,” Cas says, “I’m going to hang up before you swear at me again,” and then he does. 

Dean nearly throws his phone at the wall, gives himself a few seconds to _calm_ before heading back out into the main room. Bobby is looking a little too nonchalant on the sofa with his coffee and, well, Dean’s always known the guy is a fucking gossip. 

“I know you were eavesdropping, Bobby, so you might as well just say it,” 

“Well that sounded constructive,” 

“It’s a mess. My whole goddamn life is a fucking mess,” Dean says, phone till gripped too tight in his right hand. He still wants to smash the damn thing. He wants to call Cas back and yell at him for what he, on at least one level, knows isn’t a reason as much as it’s an _excuse_. He’s arrived back at angry again. It’s one of the stages of grief and it might well be one of the stages of getting-over-the-love-of-my-life-cheating-on-me too, but no one ever wrote that instruction manual. “Let’s braid each other’s hair, slice open our frigging chests and talk about how it _feels_.” 

“I aint about to start arguing with you either,” Bobby says, raising an eyebrow at him, “And I don’t know what the hell your boy did that means you think he’s not allowed to be angry, but you aint exactly a saint, Dean.” 

“He cheated on me, Bobby,” Dean says and, goddam, he’s not expecting his voice to break half way through. He thought he was angry enough that he could make it through the whole sentence without having some kind of obvious emotional reaction, but he can’t. 

“That damn fool.” 

Dean sits down. 

“I’m _trying_ not to care, it’s just really damn hard.” 

“Never understood why you left in the damn first place,” 

“Everything was going great,” Dean says, “Hit the one year mark and kept steam rolling past. We were gonna move to a one bed apartment and start saving. Dunno for what, but we were gonna start. Then the Novak’s were having another family meltdown, then Cas was just _gone_ all the time. Flying all over the damn country every Friday night and touching back down on Sunday evening.” Dean continues, staring at his knees. He actually hasn’t talked about any of this properly. He gave Charlie the cliff note version that things were kind of crappy before they left, but he hadn’t talked about the actual ins and outs of it all with anyone. “Sam… had that thing with that Madison chick and, Bobby, I’ve never heard him sound cut up like that. So I was gonna try book some time off and fly over and see him. It had been a while, you know, but it was so goddamn expensive, and then that winds up being the one weekend Cas was gonna be at home, and my boss didn’t want to give him the time off… I would have quit my job right there to go see Sam but, we were supposed to be saving money and shit, and I wanted to see Cas. I hated myself for it, but it’d been like a month at that point. So I didn’t book the flights.”

“And then?”

“Then Cas gets a fucking phone call from Gabriel and pisses off to frigging San Francisco and, goddamnit, I don’t have anyone _in_ Lawrence, Bobby. I was just alone, again, and wondering how the hell my priorities got so fucked up. Sam _needed_ me and I’d thrown him over for a job I didn’t even like and to spend time with my damn boyfriend, who wasn’t even there. It was a bad call. Then Dad shows up on my front door, giving me the usual propaganda about putting family first, the family business – whatever the fuck that’s even supposed to mean anymore – and I was _pissed_ because he was spouting all this crap when he didn’t know what was going on with Sam, not at all, and because he was right and I just… I fell for his bullcrap, but I was so angry, too, Bobby. He paid for me to fly out to see Sam with one of his fake cards, then I met him. Figured it would only be a couple of weeks, but the guy sucks me in. Wasn’t exactly a chore to quit my damn job. Only took it cause no one else wanted to employ me. By the time Cas got back from San Francisco, I’d already packed a bag and quit my job. He was… he was pissed.” 

“I’ll bet,” 

“And, even when I’m walking out the front door, Dad waiting for me outside in the car to drive me to the airport, he still didn’t have a damn clue why I was so pissed off. Then I left, so we didn’t talk about it. And Cas was royally irritated cause I was just _gone_ so, yeah. Then we wound up here, and my priorities are still fucked to hell and everything’s only getting worse.” 

“So, you’re both as dumb as each other,” Bobby says, standing up and depositing his empty cup of coffee in the sink. “Way I see it, you both got freaked by how serious you are about each other and started engaging in a little self-sabotage. That, and you’re both knuckle heads who don’t know how to have a damn conversation ‘bout how you’re feeling. You know, Dean, Sam ain’t your sole responsibility. Your Daddy put that on you too young and it wasn’t fair.” 

“Bobby,” Dean says, voice slightly hoarse, “I gotta look after Sam.” 

“You’ll do it a damn sight better if you do it by setting an example of what it’s like to work through your issues and allow yourself to be happy,” Bobby says, “You’re allowed to have a damn life, Dean. And Sam… he’s got me, Ellen, Jo, even if he don’t always have your old man. Don’t go pissing all over our efforts by thinking you’re the only one who’s got his back.” 

“That’s not what I mean,” Dean says, sucking in a breath, “California is a long way away.” 

“It’s even longer if you’re not answering your damn phone,” Bobby says, “Now, how about you put some proper frigging clothes on and clean your damn apartment.” 

There’s no arguing with that. 

* 

The apartment is clean, he’s showered and dressed and Dean’s pretty sure he’s actually completely sober. He doesn’t feel all that much better, because he just feels like he’s been flayed by his feelings, and now he’s actually acknowledged to himself _why_ he left in the first place this whole working-through-things crap seems even more futile. 

“Was thinking about dropping in on Sam. Could come with me, give yourself a time out from all of this,” Bobby says, looking up at him. He can probably tell that the cleaning and the showering didn’t actually _help_ any, and the offer sounds so frigging tempting. 

“Man that sounds awesome, but I think if I left right now it'd be curtains, and I'm not ready to call that.” 

Of course he's halfway through that sentence when Cas gets back from work (early, incidentally), because that's how his luck has always worked. Not that that would be news to Cas, or anything, because as much as they had a conversation about how they’re _definitely_ going to work all of this out, they both know they’re still in the danger zone here. It's just awkward. Cas looks a little deer-in-the-headlights, but that’s probably because he can extrapolate from that one sentence that he told Bobby everything. Even though he said he wasn’t gonna, practically yelled it down the phone in fact. Dean Winchester sucks. 

“Hey,” 

“Hello Dean. Hello Bobby.” 

Dean can't think of another damn thing to say and winds up just staring at him for a few minutes before he realises that Cas has got groceries and Dean should probably help put them away, or something. 

“Well this is uncomfortable,” Bobby comments, which bizarrely actually helps Dean snap out of it and head for the grocery bag, and Cas. He bought milk and half a dozen other things that Dean didn't know they were out of. He never did get round to checking what they needed for the tacos. 

"I hope the drive was... good." Cas says. Dean snorts at that because Cas is bad at small talk on a good day, and even more awkward right now. 

"You want coffee?" 

"I would rather have a beer." 

"Bad day, huh?" Cas gives him a look which is probably completely fair and makes him feel like a complete asshole, but also serves to vindicate his earlier anger. Being in love with someone you're seriously pissed at is complicated. Dean gets him the damn beer and figures that if Cas is having one, he can too. 

"Sorry," Dean finally mutters when he passes it over. 

"I can drink to that," 

"Well, cheers," Dean says, and clinks their beers together, offers him a slightly bitter version of a smile before leaning back against the kitchen counter. Bobby mutters something about them being idjits from the couch. 

"Set up the spare bedroom for Bobby," Dean says. 

"How long are you intending to stay?" 

"Depends," Bobby says, standing up to cross the room and get himself a beer too. 

Dean's not sure he really wants to talk about what that depends on. 

"Tacos," Dean says and, yeah, Bobby's right, this is seriously uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than that time Bobby drunkenly rang him up to talk about how and why he likes getting pedicure which, yeah, too much information. 

"We could get take out," 

"You don't want tacos?" 

"If you didn't want to cook," Cas says, too careful. He means because Dean hasn't cooked for the past, like, week. Dean's not actually sure what he has done in the past week, given he hasn't cooked or cleaned, applied for jobs or spoken to anyone. He really is a mess. 

"It's fine, Cas," Dean says, "Hey, how come that asshole let you out early?" 

"Apparently I was negatively impacting the working environment." 

"So you were sending death glares at people?" 

"At my computer, but yes." 

"Yeah, I'd find that distracting too." Cas rolls his eyes at that. “You wanna help cook?” 

“Yes,” Cas says, actually smiles, and it’s so fucking wonderful to fall back into the rhythm of _them_. With Cas following his instructions too carefully and too precisely, with Bobby telling them both about Ellen and Jo’s latest disagreement about Jo’s education choices from the sofa, and the fact that the conversation actually feels easy. It’s good. It’s probably the best it’s been for a long time. 

* 

Cas waits till Bobby’s in the shower and Dean’s cleaning up from food before he addresses any of what’s happened today. 

“You should go to Stanford with Bobby,” 

"Dude, you heard me say that if I leave now its curtains. That hasn’t changed in the past few hours." Dean says, idly picking through the fridge to work out what else they’re gonna need this week, given he never checked before Cas went to the shop. Cas is silent enough at that to set him on edge, though, then Dean's turning to face him. "Cas," 

"I haven't forgotten what you said earlier." Castiel says, voice arranged so carefully Dean not quite sure how to respond to it for a few seconds. The words just don’t make any sense in his head until suddenly they do, and it’s… 

“You _want_ me to go?” Cas doesn’t say anything. “Is that what this is? Some elaborate scheme to tell me you don’t _want me_ anymore?” Dean asks, his heart skipping over to double time because he can’t be hearing this right. He can’t. Not after everything. 

"I want what I've always wanted, Dean, for you to be happy. Currently the answer to that does not appear to be me." 

"Don't sell me some crappy chick flick line. That's bull. That's complete bull." 

"I can't fix this and you can't forgive this," Cas says, voice raw and awful, and frankly Dean would take the carefully arrange robot-voice over _this_ , because he doesn’t want to hear this. He doesn’t want to be hearing any of this. The shower’s turned off in the bathroom, too, so it looks a lot like Bobby is hearing all of this too, which is just fucking awesome. It’s too late to scrap the whole conversation and shelve it for a later date, though. 

"Man, I'll take forgetting it at this point." 

"Dean," Cas says. 

"No, Cas. Just no. We aint having this conversation. Not now, not ever." 

“I’m making you miserable,” Cas says, “I can’t do that anymore, Dean. I can’t come home every day and know that I’m the reason you’re –“

“– I’m miserable cause my life sucks ass. My Dad’s a douchebag, my little brother’s a thousand miles away, I’m unemployed, I miss Charlie and Benny and, yeah, my boyfriend’s apparently trying to _dump me_ too.” 

“Dean, almost all of that is _my fault_.” 

“It’s only because this conversation is so _fucking ridiculous_ that that isn’t the dumbest thing you’ve said today.” 

“You wouldn’t have stayed in Lawrence if it wasn’t for our relationship,” Cas says which, yeah, that one is true. “And you wouldn’t have quit your job and left with your assbutt of a father if you were not so desperate to get away from me.” 

“That’s what you think?” Dean asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“I’ll admit I can’t take credit for your Dad’s behaviour, but…” 

"Let me lay this down for you, Cas, you want me to walk I'll walk, but if this is another round of your self-deprecating greater good bullshit then you shove it up your ass, because you don't know what's best for yourself, let alone what's good for me." Cas just stares at him. "You want me to leave?" 

"No," 

"No," Dean repeats, almost yells, "Then fuck your little throwing in the towel speech." 

"Well this is healthy," Bobby comments, coming out from the bathroom. 

Dean goes for another beer. 

"You sure you're needing another already?" Bobby asks. It’s mild enough, but something in that conversation re-sparked his earlier anger and now Dean is just _beyond irate_. He needs to punch something. He needs to throw the fucking beer at the goddamn wall and have the satisfaction of it smashing. Something needs to break which isn't him or his goddamn relationship. 

Then his fucking phone rings, and he's too pissed off to work the avoiding conversations thing. He wants a goddamn fight. Hell, he wants to yell. He wants there to be someone that he’s allowed to yell at without it coming back to bite him in the ass. 

"What?" Dean demands, hitting answer before he really has a chance to register that it's his Dad calling. His Dad, clearly, is not expecting the aggression in his voice, because he's silent. "What?" 

"You at home, Dean?" 

"Yeah, Dad, I'm at home. Where the fuck are you? Scratch that, where the hell have you been for the past _decade_?" Logically, he knows that he should hang up before he makes anything any worse, but he's not in the mood. He's too wired. He's too done. John Winchester doesn't answer. "Well, Dad, what do you want? You've been calling pretty intently for the past couple of weeks, must have been to say something." 

"I'm calling to apologise," 

That floors him. 

"For what?" 

"Pushed you too far, Dean," 

"Damn right you did," 

"I crossed a line. Wasn't meant to go down like that, Dean. This isn't what I wanted for you." 

“Great,” Dean says, “Awesome. Well, good talk.” 

“Dean, I’m trying to talk you you,” John Winchester says, irritation sparking up in his own voice now. Apparently Dean’s supposed to take this fucking apology like it’s some kind of gift, give him an ‘apology accepted sir’, so he can quit feeling guilty about abandoning him in hospital. He probably would have done, too, if the crap with his Dad didn’t have a hundred other consequences that hadn’t completely fucked him over. “Don’t talk to me like that.” 

“Anyone ever told you you suck at apologies?” 

“Dean,” 

"You know what, Dad, next time you need to pull someone off the bench, don't bother calling. I'm done." 

They're both staring at him when he hangs up, Cas' expression utterly stoic whilst Bobby's got his eyebrows raised into a pointed question. He absolutely can't deal with that, because that involves thinking about what he just did, and that's not happening. 

"I'm going out," Dean says, "And if you pack my bags or take off when I'm out, I swear to god Castiel I will hunt you down." 

That’s a bit rich given that’s more or less _exactly_ what Dean did months ago, but whatever. Whatever. 

He stops to grab his car keys before he slams out of his apartment. 

* 

“So you finally found room in your schedule to call?” Sam asks, when Dean’s leaning on the impala at the side of the road, phone clutched in his right hand. It feels so good to hear Sam’s voice. 

“Yeah, well, you know how it is, Sammy. Only so many hours in the day.” 

“Right,” Sam scoffs. 

“How’s it going? How’s your creepy roommate?” 

“Dean, he’s not creepy,” Sam says, and Dean can hear the bitchface and it’s such a wave of relief he can’t even explain. Sam is fine. Sam is doing okay. All the other ways he’s screwed everything up aside, Sam is okay. “He just doesn’t really understand social boundaries.” 

“I had a roommate like that,” Dean says, “Course, I wound up boning the guy.” 

“Dean,” 

“Just saying, keep an eye on your heterosexuality if you wanna keep it.” 

“Are you okay, Dean? You sound… off.” 

“Fine, Sammy,” Dean says, swallowing, “Just a long week.” 

“It’s Monday,” Sam says, “And you never call me Sammy this much,” 

“Sam, drop it,” Dean says, throat tight, “How’s being a nerd going, anyway? Any girls? _Have_ you slept with your creepy roommate?” 

“Actually, I could use your advice,” 

“About sleeping with your creepy roommate?” Dean asks, “Cause I gotta say, Sam, we’re close, but I dunno how I feel about giving you that talk. Maybe ask Cas.” 

“About a _girl_ ,” 

“I’m listening,” Dean says, leaning back against the Impala and sucking in a deep breath. He definitely doesn’t hate slipping back into the role of older brother, even if he doesn’t really feel qualified for the job right this second. Sam isn’t pissed that he threw him over to stay in Lawrence with Cas (again, with Bobby’s offer fresh in his mind), even if he didn’t really know there was a choice to be made. He’d have wanted him to stay. Dean knows that, even if he’s still not all that convinced that it was the right decision on either occasion. 

The second things are okay with Cas, he’s going to fly or drive out to California and gives his little brother the biggest frigging hug. 

* 

Dean gets back to the apartment about two hours after he left. 

"Haven't seen you lose it like that for a while," Bobby comments, glancing up from his book. 

"Need to catch a damn break," Dean mutters back, running a hand over his face. 

"Your Daddy had you speaking your mind coming, boy." 

"Don't even wanna think about that. What do I do, Bobby? About Cas.” Dean asks, glancing towards the bedroom door where Cas _must_ be, because he’s not in the main room with Bobby. Bobby shuts his book and looks up at him. 

"Way I see it, you got two options. You listen to what your boy was trying to say before you flew off the handle and admit you're making yourselves miserable and fold, or you move past it." 

"Liking the sound of option two," 

"Moving past it only actually works if you _move past it_." 

"How does that even work, Bobby?" 

“You talked about it?” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, “I know every last detail.” 

“How the hell’s that gonna help anyone?” Bobby asks, sending him his usual grumpily affectionate Dean-is-an-idiot expression. “You’re just giving yourself more fuel to fixate on. That’s not what I mean by talking about it.” 

“Enlighten me, then.” 

"You gotta address why it happened in the first place. Talk it out. Learn from your damn mistakes." 

"Cause that's so frigging simple," 

"Never claimed it was easy. You needing this sofa?" 

"No, I better... well." Dean gestures towards the door. 

"Locked himself in there bout an hour ago." Bobby says, "What it's worth, he looks bout as miserable bout everything as you do." 

"People make mistakes," Dean airs out, raising one eyebrow. He thinks he wants Bobby to assure him that yes, they do, and that it's okay to forgive Cas for making a mistake. It's natural. it's him being big rather than pathetic. 

"Problem being when they make the same mistakes over and over." Bobby says, "Alright, enough stalling, y'idjit." 

"Night, Bobby." 

Cas is still awake and staring at his book without really seeing it when Dean walks in. That's not surprising given that it's still kind of early and Cas isn't the best at sleeping on a good day, let alone when Cas technically tried to end things and Dean totally lost his shit. He yelled at his father for fuck's sake.

"Hey,"

"Hello, Dean."

"I'm done yelling if you're done trying to pity dump me." 

"I don't want you to leave," Cas says, fixing him with his stupidly blue eyes. 

"Well that's two of us," Dean says, "So let's quit talking about it." 

“But I have been wilfully ignoring how miserable this has been making you, Dean, and I cannot continue to do so,” Cas says, “You haven’t been in contact with your brother or your pseudo father figure. You’ve barely left the apartment. You’ve been drinking too much. Dean, I can’t _watch that_ knowing that this is because of my actions. It is too hard.” 

Dean’s chest hurts. 

“I called Sam, just,” Dean manages to say after a few long seconds of silence where Cas looks right through him, sees all of him like he used to do all the damn time, and it’s too much. Being vulnerable in front of Cas right now is difficult. He knows he needs to do it if they’re going to get anywhere, but… it’s just hard. “I applied for a couple of jobs this morning. I… you know I get like this sometimes, Cas, but I’m working on it. You just, you need to give me more time.” 

“It’s never been my fault before,” 

“It’s not really your fault right now, either,” Dean says, sighing, “I mean, yeah, it hasn’t helped any, but…” 

"Dean, what you said to your father was...” Cas begins. Dean’s not entirely sure how he feels about the conversation change, both because he doesn’t really want to talk about what happened with Dad just _ever_ , but also because they might have been on the edge of talking about something important. Something that might actually help. 

"Dumb?" 

"Almost profound." 

"Dude, I told him to piss off. It wasn't exactly Shakespeare." 

"I've wanted you to do that for a very long time,” Cas says, moving almost imperceptibly closer. Dean’s in-tune enough with every little thing to notice though, and offers out his arm. Cas sets down his book and settles underneath his arm, pressed against his side. 

"I'm gonna regret the hell out of it tomorrow," 

"You deserve better, Dean. From your father and from me." 

"I'm not exactly blameless here, though, Cas. You've been taking a hell of a hit considering the shit I pulled." 

Cas just kisses him which is good because he _needs_ the physical affirmation right now, but is actually pretty messed up considering some of the stuff that's been said today: Cas thinks Dean took off _because_ of him, and he won't even talk about it. Talking through all of it with Bobby has at least got him to realise that most of the reason he left was because of Sam-related guilt; it probably wouldn’t have been enough if he wasn’t already pissed off at Cas, sure, but then Dean’s not entirely sure he _told_ the guy he was lonely and unhappy and all the rest. 

Any time Cas' bought up Dean's actions he's dropped it almost immediately and it's... well, Dean figured he was justified in ignore that because he was hurting most, but... Goddamnit, no wonder none of its getting better. 

"Never do that again," Dean mutters, letting Cas push him flat against the mattress to kiss him properly. "Try and make me leave cause of some messed up narrative about what's best for me." 

"Okay, Dean,” 

It’s a lie. They haven’t really achieved anything. Cas is still blaming himself for Dean’s misery brigade and he still won’t talk about it, and he’d probably still push him to leave if he thought Dean would listen to it for a second. Dean’s still wallowing in his misery, even if he doesn’t feel like he’s drowning in it today. 

Dean lets himself believe it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this chapter is almost 100% different from the original first draft. Bobby wasn't even supposed to show up. Heh. Well, as a result our fluff-appointment is being schedule back from chapter 4 to like... chapter 5 onwards? Maybe? They're both just so stubborn and pig-headed and wrong it keeps taking them longer to sort through everything.


	4. Chapter 4

“You look better today,” Cas says, walking through the door a couple of days after Bobby left them to their weird pretend-domestic bliss, wherein Cas has been acting as though everything’s fine and like he doesn’t get to have emotions or feelings about any of this. It’s as irritating as it’s disconcerting. 

“You don’t,” Dean shoots back, taking in the crumpled trench coat douchey tax account outfit. It’s been nearly a year since they (well, more Cas really) joined the adult work force, and he’s still not quite used to Cas’ all dolled up in a shirt and tie. It’s weird. 

Bobby stuck around for a couple of days, got him getting him up during the actual morning, affectionately-bullied him into applying for a few more jobs then left with the assurance if either of them needed anything, they should “pick up the damn phone you idjits” and, to Dean, “this could take a while to stop hurting. You need out you’re always welcome” and “of course I’m on your damn side. You and Sam are the closest things I’ve got for sons. I aint about to cheerlead for anyone that hurts you. Not telling you to get out ‘cause that’s not what you wanna hear and you aint gonna listen. Just trying to _help you_ work with what you’ve got.” 

Dean’s feeling a little better for it and for the four phone conversations he’s had since where Dean’s complained stroke talked about how hurt he’s been feeling for eons whilst Bobby occasionally grunts to let him know he hasn’t hung up due to boredom. Bobby is an actual saint. 

"Get over here," Dean says, nodding to the other side of the sofa and the space under his arm. Cas, who does look frigging awful for the record, frowns for a second before obliging (course he has to shed his damn trench coat and leave it on the back of their sofa on the way because Cas is essentially incapable of hanging the damn thing up). "We're watching, actually dunno what the hell we're watching, but this chick is about to go full dingo ate my baby crazy." 

"You seem to dislike me less today," Cas says, as Dean distractedly starts running his fingertips over the back of Cas' neck, it's just thoughtless tactility, but it is new. For the second time new, anyway. 

"Dislike you," Dean repeats, "Dude I've never disliked you. You hurt me and you irritate me something crazy most of the time, but I aint never disliked you." Cas has one of those pinched looks directed at the television. "Cas, come on. I piss you off too when you're not going all Stepford on my ass, which is fucking creepy for the record. I'm annoying. I annoy you all the time." 

"I'm not 'going all Stepford' on your ass." 

"You even understand that reference?" 

"Yes," Cas says, "You've explained it to me before," which is cute. Real fucking cute. 

"You've been _cleaning_ ," Dean says, "You know how many times I've tried to get you to clean? Apparently all I had to do was push you enough to cheat on me, leave you feeling guilty enough to act like some creepy domestic robot. You're not even relaxed now." 

"I'm trying to make things better." 

"Yeah, too damn hard, that's my point," Dean says, fingers still tangled up in the base of Cas' hair. 

Cas sighs and, at last, relaxes into his touch a little more. Not properly. Not how it had been before everything went down, or even like it had been at the beginning of their relationship where they were still finding their feet, but at least better than before. Things are going to take time, anyway, and they still need to talk about half a dozen things. 

"Reckon our problem is that we're both really frigging needy," Dean says. He's lost track of the program already, but then Cas is more generally more interesting than TV. "Didn't get enough hugs as a child kinda fucked in the head needy." Cas doesn't say anything. "Cas, we gotta talk about this at some point. We do." 

"I would prefer if it wasn't now." 

"You've been saying that for days, man." 

"You don't seem as angry or hurt since discussing things with Bobby." 

"None of that's gone away, Cas, and it's gonna take a while to wait it out, but I've been thinking about it with a clearer head and I don't think... dude, I didn't know what leaving would do to you. Don't think I really get it now." 

"I'm glad Bobby visited," Cas says, which is the same kind of passive avoidance he's been getting since Bobby left. Dean’s not entirely sure what to _do_ about it, either. There’s just no getting him to open up or relax or even get him snapping at Dean for the usual stuff (not doing the dishes, being purposefully obtuse, making comments that could be construed as sexist; the usual stuff that Cas usually tells him off for at least three times a day). 

"If talking about this is enough to send us over the edge then we should have given up already." 

"Do you want coffee?" Cas asks, shifting from under Dean’s arm to glance towards the kitchen. If they could have _one_ conversation about something serious without Cas looking for the exits, that would be just stellar. 

"Not really. I just want my boyfriend to stop conversation dodging and give me some straight answers." 

"I'm not an expert in straight, Dean." 

"Hark, he still makes jokes." 

Cas kisses him then, which is just a different side of the same bullshit avoidance coin, but is still kind of nice. He does get where he's coming from: their interactions have started feeling easy again and it's addictive and glorious and all the rest, and talking about it probably is going to bring up a whole lot of crap. Repressing it is more comfortable and it means that he gets to make out with Cas on the sofa like everything's just fine, and Dean gets to loosen the guys stupid frigging wonky tie and flip them over and kiss the guy stupid. He gets that that's a much more enjoyable way to spend the evening than talking about the ways they've gutted each other. 

He's just not entirely sure how long it's going to last. 

"Cas," Dean says, when he's the guy essentially pinned underneath him on the sofa, one of Cas' hands tangled up in his t-shirt and the other curled round the back of his neck. They're still not back to having sex, which is probably for the best, even if it also pretty much sucks. They've only been engaging in frigging physical contact the past few days. "Can I just tell you why this is fucking with my head so much?” 

"Dean, I'm not an idiot. I know why." 

"Humour me," Dean says, pausing to kiss him because he's there and he's Cas. "You know me, so you know my weak spots. My dad... He's been barking orders at my whole damn life, then disappearing, making out every damn thing I do isn't good enough. And Sam, I give fucking everything for that kid, and most of our lives he's been too young to do anything but resent me for all the stuff I couldn't do. That's not his fault. He didn't know what he was doing. My dad's too far up his own ass to know, too. He's not a bad guy he's just... got other stuff going on. So I'm used to getting screwed over. Then it comes to you, and it just reinforces every shitty thought in my headspace about how useless am. And I just... you do know, man, you know all of that, and I thought you knew better. That's what I'm struggling with." 

"Dean," Cas says, as Dean detangles himself and sits up properly. It's easier to do this when they're not face to face, even if that's probably selfish. 

"But, thing is man, I know you too. Your dad packed his bags one day for a business trip and never came back. Gabriel and Anna did pretty much the same thing. You got them back, sure, but it... they didn't come back for you, it just sort of happened. They got pulled back in. They didn't choose to come back. So me packing up and leaving is probably the worst thing I could have done to you, and I knew that, I just... I wasn't thinking, Cas." 

"I don't want to talk about this," Cas says, standing up. 

"Fuck that," Dean says, "We're not gonna move past this unless we actually move past this." 

(Cas doesn't need to know he's quoting Bobby on that one, but it’s good advice. He’s been fixating on all of it for weeks and wondering why he’s not feeling any better. Obviously it still _hurts_ whether he’s thinking about it or not, but playing the damn thing over and over in his head doesn’t make anyone any happier). 

"I don't see how this is going to help," 

"That's because you're _really pissed off_ at me, Castiel, and you don't want to acknowledge it." 

"Stop making assumptions about how I feel." 

"Then talk to me. I'm trying here, damnit, you could join me on that,” Dean says, then he’s standing up too and following Cas’ progress towards the centre of the room. 

"I _thought_ I was trying too hard. I don’t understand how I could be doing both." 

"Well you're doing it wrong." 

"Why do you get to dictate that?" Cas demands, eyes flashing, and he’s at least once again managed to unlock angry-Cas. It’s a step up from the Cas who just calmly exits every conversation before they can actually start having the frigging conversation, but it’s still not exactly ideal. 

"Will you just trust me?" 

"I did," Cas snaps, then he's slamming from the room. 

"Damnit Cas, this is what I'm trying to talk about." Dean yells at the closed bedroom door. 

The door stays resolutely silent and resolutely shut. 

* 

“Dean,” Cas asks, emerging from their bedroom for the second time that evening (the first was to get some food in which he more or less ignored all of Dean’s attempts to start conversations, because Cas is real mature like that), now in the sweats he usually sleeps in. “Are you coming to bed?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Dean says, setting down his half-finished beer (only his third, which is _fine_ ) and turning to look at him. “Wasn’t sure if you wanted me to.” 

“Dean,” 

“All right, I’m coming hot stuff, keep your hair on.” 

“You’re an idiot,” Cas says, smiling ever so slightly, which is a step up. Things _are_ getting better. 

“You like it,” Dean grins, pausing in the doorway to get his hands on the guy’s hips and rest their foreheads together. He really frigging missed the closeness of all of this whilst he was fucking around with his Dad and he hasn’t really got his fill since; everything was just too clogged up and awkward and painful. It’s not exactly pain free _now_ when things are still a mess, Cas is mad and not talking about it and Dean’s not entirely sure he’s ever going to really get over it… but, they’re getting there. Besides, he’s not sure he’ll ever quite get _enough_ of Cas. 

“I do,” Cas agrees, leaning forward to kiss him. It’s a good kiss. The kind of kiss he’s never really experienced with anyone but Cas, cause it’s all about being near each other and nothing about sex. It’s Cas’ apology and vulnerability and his desperation for everything to work out, all wrapped up in the kind of kiss they could almost put in a damn children’s film. 

“Can we talk about that night?” Dean asks, which he probably knows is putting his foot in it the second Cas tenses up and steps into the normal boundaries of personal space, rather than that version of it. 

“Damnit, Dean.” 

“You want me to shut up all you gotta do is actually talk to me,” 

“We _have_ talked about it, in explicit detail. Going over it again is not my definition of _moving past it_.” 

“I was asking the wrong questions,” Dean says, following him back into the bedroom, “What was going on in your head, Cas?” 

“I told you,” 

“You said, what, that you were angry and lonely enough that it seemed like a good idea,” Dean says, “But I don’t buy that. I know you, Cas.” 

“Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you thought,” 

“I aint buying that for a second,” Dean says, “but, fine, whatever. I’ll quit trying to talk to you if that’s what you want.” 

“Good,” 

“But _will you just_ tell me why you don’t wanna talk about this?” Dean asks, which gets a sigh from Cas and silence. 

He doesn’t answer until they’re both in bed, lights off, and awkwardly not touching. 

“I don’t like what was ‘going on in my head.’ I wasn’t _attempting_ to hurt you, because at the time I wasn’t particularly convinced you would care, but I had reasons for my actions. I wasn’t _drunk_ or temporarily insane, I knew exactly what I was doing. Everything else just sounds like an excuse and there _aren’t any_.” 

“How could you think I wouldn’t care?” 

“Goodnight, Dean,”

“Cas,” Dean says, “Cas, _talk to me_.” 

Nothing. 

* 

He wakes up feeling like shit all over again the next day. 

Cas gets back from work and finds him on the sofa and he knows, he just knows like he always does, and has joined him with two sodas and the duvet from the spare room in under five minutes. 

“This is why I didn’t want to discuss it,” Cas says, making space for himself pressed up against Dean before pulling the duvet over both of them. Having Cas treat him like a frigging human teddy bear has always made him feel like goddamn batman, cause Cas is so bad ass and so content to let Dean throw an arm around his stomach and just _cuddle_ , and it helps a little now. Not as much as he wants it to, but it does help. 

“Got a job interview on Monday,” Dean says. His voice sounds flat. He buries his face in the back of Cas’ neck instead. 

“Good,” Cas says, threading their fingers together. 

Cas orders them both take away and puts on Dr Sexy (Dean is _way_ behind because he sure as hell didn’t watch it when he was with his Dad, but it’s not like it’s difficult to pick up what’s going on, even if he’s a little confused about why one of the characters now appears to be a frigging ghost when last he heard they were about to getting hitched to one of the senior consultants). Considering how all round awful he’s feeling, the evening turns out sort of okay. 

** 

“We need to have an argument,” Dean says, two evenings later when he’s feeling pretty much human again. The apartment’s clean, he’s got two job interviews next week now and he even went and met up with Garth because he’s pretty aware that only socialising with Cas isn’t healthy and is probably part of the reason why they got in this mess in the first place. Cas is even more tight lipped than before and he’s not rising to Dean’s bait at all anymore, and it’s not helping. They need to _talk_ about all of this. Desperate times and all. 

Cas turns to look at him. 

“I thought the general aim was not to argue,” 

“Well you’re not talking,” Dean says, “So I gotta resort to some desperate measures here, Cas, and if that involves getting you mad enough to start speaking your mind then so be it.” 

He’s been thinking about it all day. He hasn’t had anything else to do, after all. 

“You want me to get mad at you,” 

“Bingo,” Dean says, “That’s exactly what I want.” 

“One module in human psychology does not mean you know what you’re talking about,” Cas says, looking back towards his laptop and squinting at the screen. 

“Thought you wanted to work this out.” 

“I disagree with your methods." 

“Stop being such a baby, man.” 

“Dean, your attempts to irritate me are not going to work,” Cas says, still not looking up from his laptop screen. 

“You sound pretty confident,” Dean says, sitting down opposite him at the kitchen table and flipping the lid of his laptop shut. He’s had a lifetime of being a big brother under his belt, so he is fully qualified in pissing people off in purpose. Cas just ignores him. “For fuck’s sake Cas, talk to me. Don’t just _sit_ there acting like everything’s a-okay. That we’re _fine_ just because we’ve stopped yelling all the time, and because no one’s cried all week, and because I’m not drinking as much. We’re not _fine_ and we’re not gonna be fine until we _talk about this_.” 

“I don’t understand why talking about it entails you attempting to get me angry,” 

“Because you’ve shut yourself off. I’m not saying I haven’t pushed you to it by being a complete dick, but… I’m here chewing you out for the dumbest stuff and then nothing’s getting resolve. So, yell at me. Get angry.” 

“Dean, I’m not going to lose my temper with you.” 

"Yell at me, damnit Cas.” Dean snaps, standing up, “Fucking get mad. Justify yourself." 

“I told you, there is no justification,” Cas says, finally meeting his gaze. “My _excuses_ are not going to make you feel any better.” 

"Bullshit," Dean says, sucking in a deep breath, “I’m the one who _left_.” 

“I’m aware,” 

“Are you? Because you’re doing a damn good job of pretending that never happened,” Dean says, “Come on, man, I don’t think we’ve even touched the surface of how much that hurt you, here. You said you thought I left to get away from you and that you didn’t think I’d care about you cheating. Why? The hell lead you to those conclusions, man, cause I gotta admit I am lost. At least give me a goddamn map. A couple of fucking road signs.” 

“None of those things justifies my actions,” 

“Dude, I choose to leave. I’m the one who packed my bags and fucked off to wherever because my asshole father asked me too. You think my reasons justified those actions? Because I had a good long list of reasons.” 

“Really,” Cas deadpans in a way that Dean’s pretty sure is supposed to come across as bored, but there is a slight edge to his voice. He’s getting _somewhere_ at least. 

“I was lonely, for a start. You spent four weekends straight flying out to Lucifer and Michael to go deal with their bickering, then Gabriel, and it sucked.” 

“It sucked,” Cas repeats and, oh yeah, he’s really getting somewhere now. There’s danger in that voice. “You left because _it sucked_ that I had to make several familial visits several weekends in a row.” 

"I barely fucking saw you. We weren't hanging out or talking. We were barely having sex. Barely touching, even." 

"I was exhausted," Cas says and, there we go, now he's getting angry. "I apologise if I wasn't paying enough attention to you, Dean, but another of my family members was threatening to disown each other, and I thought you would do me the courtesy of understanding the situation. What I didn't expect was for you to _leave_." 

"There's being distracted and there's being so fucking involved with your shitty family that you don't frigging care about me anymore." 

"And would disappearing with your father for three months be considered 'distracted' or 'fucking involved'?" 

“The weekend my Dad showed, I was gonna go visit Sam. I cancelled cause it was the first damn weekend we were gonna be in the same state for like a _month_ , Cas. And then you pissed off to San Francisco.” 

“I didn’t know it was _important_. You didn’t tell me you wanted to visit Sam –“ 

“ – because you weren’t frigging there for me to tell, Cas.” 

“ – and if you’d _told me_ it was important then I wouldn’t have gone.” 

“Well, I didn’t think I should have to,” Dean snaps, “You used to know that kind of crap, Cas. You used to just _know_.” 

"Why did you have to leave?" Cas demands, shoulders tight, blue eyes crystal clear and piercing right through him. He’s standing too now and there’s too much emotion in those baby blues and as much as this was the plan, he sort of forgot how fucking terrifying Cas can be. 

"You left first." 

"Do not be insolent," Cas snaps, and he's really angry, now. "I was gone for a few weekends. I did not leave. You left, with very little indicator of when you would back, or whether you even intended to be back. I was supposed to _believe you_ when you say you cared about me, despite all evidence to the contrary.” Dean blinks at him. “I never wanted to be this person, damnit Dean. _This isn’t supposed to be me._ ” 

“Like I said –” 

“ – and _then_ you aren’t even _surprised_. I compromised _every_ rule I have, and you expected me to do it. _How_ can you have such a low opinion of me?” 

“I knew what kind of corner I was pushing you into, Cas.” 

“Worse, I proved your low expectations of me correct. You’re not the only person who has been _humiliated_ , Dean. I was _humiliated_ when my brother visited and I had to explain that you’d left without warning to go chasing ghosts with your father. I was humiliated when you chose your father over me, because I believed you when you told me you wouldn’t do it. I am humiliated because every damn person who told us we weren’t thinking this relationship through was correct. Am I angry enough for you yet?” Dean just looks at him because… well, he doesn’t know what he was expecting. He knew there was a lot of stuff going on his head, but he didn’t quite figure how explosively it would all come out. “No, I didn’t think you would care, because I didn’t think you had any intention of coming back. You said you’d be a few weeks, then you said a month and by the time you got hurt you’d stopped talking about coming back _at all._ You made me doubt everything, Dean, all of it, because how could you _walk out_ if you meant any of the things you’d said to me.” 

“It was… it was because I _freaked_ that I put you before Sam and you weren’t there, and I was lonely and I missed my brother, and Dad _needed me_ and you just, it felt like you didn’t anymore.” 

“You only came back because you got hurt,” Cas says, voice ice cold and, shit, shit, “Otherwise, you would have continued rambling around with your father, calling me whenever you had time on your hands, and expecting me not to have a problem with it.” 

“What? No, Cas,” Dean says, “Yeah, my Dad screwing me over like that snapped me out of it but –” 

“ – you said you were lonely here, Dean, but I don’t know anyone here anymore either. My family aren’t here, just like yours aren't here. _You_ are my support network, Dean, and you left me in this goddamn apartment to rot. I went to that fucking bar because I was lonely and because I was angry and because I didn’t think it mattered either way and at least there was _someone_ who wanted me.” 

“Cas,” Dean says, they’re pretty much chest to chest, now. Cas is radiating anger and upset and hurt and Dean honest to God _didn’t know_. He’s an asshole for wallowing around in his own hurt and his own self-pity, just assuming that Cas knows that he loves him, but it’s… apparently it’s not that simple. None of this is simple. It got complicated a long damn time ago. 

“The only reason I believe you care about me _remotely_ right now, Dean, is the fact that you’re trying so hard to stay after I betrayed you. You’re right. I do know you. I know why and how that hurt.” 

“If that’s what it takes to make you believe it, Cas, then I’m glad you fucking did it.” 

“You don’t mean that,” Cas says, voice dropping down to a normal level except, because it’s Cas, it’s impossibly deep and gravelly. 

“I would do fucking anything for you, Cas. Anything. You don’t know that I love you then maybe you don’t know me, because that is integral, it’s frigging – ” 

Cas cuts him off by kissing him. It’s a relief because Dean has no idea what the hell else was about to come falling out of his mouth and it’s just hit him all over again how close they were (are?) to loosing this, just because they’re both insecure and messed up and don’t know how to have a damn relationship. The whole thing’s pretty much a massive error in communication and because… he _gets it_. He gets why Cas did it. He understands. He finally frigging _knows_ how Cas, beautiful, hilarious, stuck-up Cas, might have thought himself into thinking that it was a good idea. 

“I’m still angry at you,” Cas pretty much growls into his neck as he pushes Dean against the frigging oven. Dean’s more than okay with the turn of events, actually, as Cas pulls Dean’s t-shirt over his head then furiously reconnects their lips. 

“Likewise, buddy,” Dean says in a moment when they’re not kissing, because he is. He’s angry that Cas could think that Dean didn’t care. He's angry that Cas didn't just ask him rather than fucking cheat on him. He’s more angry at _himself_ , but he’s plenty angry at Cas too. That’s probably going to take a while. “You glad I got you to talk though, huh?” 

“Shut the fuck up, Dean,” 

“And they say romance is dead,” Dean grins, then Cas proceeds to thoroughly and completely shut him the fuck up. 

* 

“Say what you want about the argument,” Dean says, with Cas sprawled out on his chest in their bed, which they just about made it to after a degree of mostly breathless negotiation, “but the post-argument sex was pretty awesome.” 

He’s not entirely sure whether it was inadvisable or not, but it was almost definitely necessary. He needed that and he’s pretty sure that Cas was on the same wavelength, too (which might be the first time that’s happened in a long ass time). Everything feels just about okay right this second. Clearly, there's still a fuck tonne of stuff they still need to talk about and address - they're barely scratching the damn surface of ways that they've hurt each other, here - but it feels like they're making progress. Definitely. 

“You’re impossible,” 

“Cas,” Dean says, running a hand down his back to keep him there, “You’re right. Leaving was really, really dumb. You have a right to be angry about every single damn thing you bought up. I screwed up, I just… I didn’t think that we wouldn't be able to take it. I guess I was thinking that maybe you’d notice how goddamn miserable I was if I pulled out the big guns.” 

“If you had just _told me_ , Dean.” 

“You should’ve told me too though, Cas. If you’d said any of that to me I’d have been driving home in a matter of minutes. We just… we took advantage of us. Put this whole damn relationship on a pedestal, then got freaked to hell when things started going wrong.” 

“What do you mean?” Cas asks, staring at him. 

“We figured that because we were us, that this would be it. That we’d work out. So we stopped trying to actually work it out. And then suddenly we’ve both got nine till fives and they kind of suck, actually, and half are friends are in the wind and we’re being expected to act like adults. You assumed that I’m well-adjusted enough not to feel insecure and shitty when you weren’t around much and then I assumed that you just _knew_ I cared and would keep knowing that, even if I acted like a dick.” 

“Essentially, we are both incredibly needy, neurotic and irrational,” Cas says, lips pulled into one of his tight frowns. 

“Cas, eighteen months ago you were the king of one night stands and I wasn’t exactly a nun. It’s big, man, to go from that to this. People were right. We didn’t realise how fucking huge this is. So then something comes along, like with your brothers and their drama, and instead of just _dealing_ with it I chucked a massive grenade into our relationship, and then you set it off, and now we’ve got this burnt our wreckage and we both kinda of hate ourselves.” 

“That seems like a fairly accurate analogy,” 

“So, we need to acknowledge that were both dumb, and immature and made a right fucking mess. Of everything.” 

“And then?” 

“And then we start over,” Dean says, “But this time we pay attention to what’s going on with us, along with the rest of the bullshit.” 

“How?” 

“I dunno, man,” Dean says, “Date night?” 

“We just aged a number of years,” Cas says, but he’s almost smiling again. 

“Yeah, well, that’s kinda the point,” Dean says, “We haven’t been on a date for like, nearly six months, dude. Hanging out in the apartment we live in doesn’t exactly count.” 

“Six months?” 

“I know I was being irrational,” Dean says, still tracing up and down Cas’ spine, “But, Cas, it was really bad before I left. You were distracted with your brothers which I get, I do man, but…we gotta do _better_ than that.” 

“I… I’m probably not faultless, here, Dean.” 

“Well, I’m pretty damn sure leaving was the biggest overreaction of the city, but it... it was more about Sam and my Dad and my messed up head,” Dean says, “I vote we park all of that crap here. But just…is there anything else you’re mad about? Doesn’t matter what it is, but we’ve gotta talk about it, or it’s gonna come out a couple of months down the line when we’re next arguing about the laundry.” 

“And then we reset to here,” 

“Exactly,” 

Cas looks at him for a few minutes before sitting up. 

“I’m furious that you got hurt, Dean,” Cas says, “Particularly given that, as you have not mentioned any medical bills, I’m assuming you were caught up in your father’s illegal misdoings and using fake credit cards at the time. How would I have known if you were more seriously injured? And the fact that you would endanger your future by breaking the law astounds me.” 

“That’s fair,” Dean swallows, “He reels me in, man. I give in an inch and suddenly I’m six foot under. I didn’t know any of that crap was gonna happen.” 

“You could have made an educated guess,” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, “But I think we’ve established I wasn’t thinking logically.” 

“You said I was privileged to trust you,” Cas says, “But whilst I trust you not to sleep with someone else, I don’t trust you not to leave the second things get difficult again.” 

“You think I haven’t learnt my lesson?” Dean asks, “For the record, if I could call a do-ever…” 

“Likewise,” 

“And it’s not gonna happen again, Cas, we’re too important.” 

“Can you forgive me?” Cas asks, frowning at him. 

“I get it,” Dean says, closing his eyes for a second. “I… yeah. I can. I think. I mean, maybe give me like another week to process the rest of it, but… Can you, uh, can you forgive me too?” 

“I would like to go over the reasons why you left again tomorrow,” Cas says, “But, yes. I very much believe I can.” 

“Awesome,” Dean says, exhaling, “Now get back down here, Cas, I wanna relish the moment.” 

“You mean you want to cuddle,” Cas says, arching an eyebrow at him but going nevertheless. It's good. They've talked things out enough that this at least feels _pure_. They've got to hash it all out a couple more times over, probably will hit another roadblock or sick on the way, but Dean's pretty sure they're back at a point of mutual understanding about all of it. He knows how it all went wrong, which means they can fix it. It's still gonna take a while, but they can fix it. 

“So sue me,” Dean mutters into the guy’s hair. “It’s all gonna work out, Cas. We’re going to be just fine.” 

It’s probably the first time he’s actually believed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /end angst
> 
> Well, maybe. Heh. We have an up curve. Cas got to say his piece (which was fun -- I like angry Cas). Roll on date night + fluff


	5. Chapter 5

Talking everything out is taking a damn long time, but it’s fine. It’s necessary, if not wholly painless, and he can feel everything slotting into place and getting better this side of the Big Argument. 

"That's not what you said in the slightest," Cas says with a pinched expression, "You said you were giving us both space, which is the exact opposite of what you meant." 

"Technically, I was giving us space, it just wasn’t space anyone actually wanted,” Dean throws back, which has Cas roll his eyes which is certainly better than him yelling or getting upset about how they’re both total idiots, actually. It’s also better than his routine of him pretending like Dean isn’t super annoying a great deal of the time, because one of the things he’s always liked about Cas is how he calls Dean out on his bullshit. He’s never exactly been afraid of offending him. 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” 

“I ... maybe, but I was mad. Probably should've just yelled rather than gone to California to cool off then town hopped for months, but…” 

"I didn't understand," Cas says, then his lips quirk up slightly, "It was like that Taylor Swift song." 

"What did you just say to me?" 

"The one about not getting back together," 

"I don't know what the damn hell you're talking about," 

"We hadn't seen each other in a month when you said you needed space," Cas says, his voice too deep and serious for him to be talking about frigging Taylor Swift like that. And Dean does know the damn song, even if he's not entirely sure how, and Cas has got the rhythm dead on and it's just.... It's fucking hilarious, actually. It’s damn near impossible not to allow Cas’ sense of gravity to pull him in, swaying into his personal space and just grinning at him. 

"You are frigging perfect," 

"Well that's grossly inaccurate." Cas says, setting his breakfast plate down on the coffee table (which Cas relocated to actually near the sofa whilst Dean was away; apparently they’re adult enough to use their actual coffee table now) and turning to face him with a frown. 

"You are," 

"How can you say that, Dean?" 

"You're quoting Taylor Swift at me man. Pretty sure you're the only person in this universe I'd let get away with that." Dean says, and they’re sitting pretty much nose to nose and it’s _so damn good_. He couldn’t have given this up. Not when they both want it so much. 

"You like the song about shaking things off." 

"No, Cas, I don't." 

"You know the words," 

"Everyone knows the words," 

"You know the words to the rap segment." 

"It gets in my damn head," Dean says, "You wanna talk things out some more?" 

"Not right now," Cas says, which figures. It’s Saturday morning and Cas actually had to get up and work every other day of the week and it’s been a plenty challenging one at that. He probably should have waited until a weekend night until he pushed Cas into yelling his feelings at him, because they didn’t wind up getting a whole lot of sleep that night and Cas has been trying to catch up ever since. No wonder the guy needs a break. Fucking nine to fives, man. 

"We should probably take it slow," Dean says, more because he’s aware that it’s probably sensible than because he actually means it. The big ‘us’ is pretty damn fragile right now, even if they’re doing a fair job of filling in the cracks and rebuilding their foundations. It’s still going to take a hell of a lot more time before they properly sink into a little more. Cas is uncomfortable about Dean saying dumb sentimental shit because he doesn’t think he deserves it and because he’s still working on believing it, and Dean’s pretty sure he’s on the cusp of another few bad days, because shit like this leaves scars. No matter how much they frigging love each other, it still scars like a bitch. 

"Dean, we live together and we've slept together three times since the argument. I think it's too late for slow." Cas says, still close enough that they could probably be making out if they moved half a centimetre forward, which is a thought. 

"It was kind of a long shot anyway," Dean says, "In that case..." 

“In that case?” 

“Wanna watch Star Wars?” 

“Star Wars,” Cas repeats. 

“It’s like Viagra to me,” Dean grins, leaning forward to kiss the spot under Cas’ ear just because he wants to, “When I’m watching it with you, anyway.” 

“You’re in a very good mood, today,” Cas says, curving a hand round the back of Dean’s back to keep him close enough to bury his lips in Cas’ neck. He _is_ in a good mood. He’s in a good mood because Cas cheated on him because he didn’t think Dean cared, which sucks because it’s such a huge failing on his behalf and because it’s difficult to believe things even got that bad, but he didn’t do it to hurt him, or because he was fed up of him, or for any of the other shitty reasons that have been spinning through his head. “Although I have my doubts about Star Wars being an aphrodisiac.” 

“I’ll prove it to you,” Dean grins, although it takes another fifteen minutes (in which he totally gives Cas a hickey that he doesn’t yet know about it) till he actually finds the motivation to go find the boxset. 

* 

They wind up going bowling again for their first scheduled date night. Somehow it wound up their go-to for when things are kind of crappy. 

It’s a good job Dean loves the guy, because Cas fell asleep halfway through the Empire Strikes back which is almost unforgivable. Still, the impromptu nap seemed to have done him some good, because he seems a little more relaxed this side of it. Cas is definitely the one struggling most with everything today, which is a position that seems to invariable switch (heh) due to inane, should-be inconsequential events, which just means that they both have a lot of motivation to stay in tune with each other. It’s good, actually. Its sets a better precedent for the rest of their damn lives, certainly. 

Cas puts their names into the machine as obscure sex positions that they’ve previously completely failed at (some just don’t transfer to none heterosexual sex, they just don’t), and buys them both those shitty hot dogs just for the purpose of eating the damn thing as inappropriately as possible. Dean’s stomach hurts from laughing so much after Cas nearly drops a bowling ball on a conservative looking guy’s foot, and Cas’ irritated stop-laughing-at-me-Dean expression is so goddamn precious, because it means that Cas is comfortable enough to quit acting like a stepford wife and start calling Dean out on being a dick. 

There’s a bunch of kids on the lane next door who Dean first thinks are being homophobic dicks, but turn out to be one of the groups of teenagers they taught sex ed to in their final year. In fact, by the time Cas has completely decimated him and made several loud jokes about scoring, Dean’s pretty sure it’s the guy who originally asked if they were a couple and kick started Dean’s original Cas freak out. 

“We got an audience,” Dean says, nodding over to them. 

“I like to think of them as fans,” Cas says, stepping into Dean’s personal space. He’s been smiling again all evening and it’s such a goddamn relief. Cas’ misery crawls under his skin and makes everything a little less right than it’s supposed to be. Even since the talk things have been _strained_. He’s not under any delusions that this means that everything, or anything really, has been fixed. They’re probably both overcompensating and deluding themselves a little bit, but… they’ll get there. 

“Charlie reckons they all placed will they won’t they bets on us,” 

“Well, as I am fully intending to get lucky later,” Cas says, “Perhaps we should share the joy.” 

“Always a good Samaritan,” Dean grins, pulling him in by his t-shirt. It’s probably a pretty obscene kiss for a bowling alley, but straight couples do it all the time so Dean’s not inclined to give a single fuck about it. It gets their attention, anyway. One of them cheers. At least two of them clap. 

Conservative-dude drops the bowling ball he’s holding and then they’re pulling apart to work out the source of the expletives, and then they’re both laughing, Dean still clutching hold of his t-shirt. They may be a year into this working life bullshit, but they’re clearly not adults yet. It’s good. They’re almost good, too. 

“Cas,” Dean says, when they’re headed back to the car and Dean’s started overthinking again, “Uh, last night I was thinking that…” 

It had struck him after Cas had fallen asleep and it was earth-shattering enough to drive him out of bed and back onto the sofa for another three hours before he managed to get his head back under control. He wasn’t entirely sure how he hadn’t noticed before, either, but then he couldn’t _quit thinking about it_ and all he wanted was for Cas to wake the hell up, come out there and reassure him that he was overreacting. He probably would have done (Cas usually wakes up easy) if he wasn’t so beat from their half crappy half awesome week, but as it was Dean was stuck wanting him to wake up but not wanting him to wake up, before he remembered how to breathe, poured himself some jack (he may be doing a hell of a lot better, but that doesn’t mean he’s been miraculously reborn as someone with good coping mechanisms overnight) and eventually talked himself back into bed. He didn’t _sleep_ well, but he did sleep eventually. 

“What?” 

“It doesn’t matter. I’m just… being an idiot.” 

“Dean,” Cas says, “Although you are prone to occasional idiocy, I’d prefer you to be honest about it.” 

“Dick,” Dean smiles, then fixes his gaze just over Cas’ shoulder because it’s easier to deal with potential rejection that way. Plus, he doesn’t feel like so pathetic and needy if he doesn’t have to look Cas in the eye, but he… well, he does need to say it. Communication issues are the whole reason that the damn thing made him feel like his chest was splitting in half all night. “You haven’t… uh, fuck.” 

“Dean,” 

“You haven’t said you love me. Since I got back.” 

“Oh,” Cas says, smiling wide and lovely, the sort of smile that makes his eyes crinkle, “I didn’t want to diminish it or use it as an excuse. Of course I love you.” 

“Cool,” Dean manages, all the air in his lungs exiting all at once, his stomach flipping over to join the party. Obviously, Cas loves him. Obviously. 

“Cool,” Cas repeats, still beaming, “You are extraordinary and I will tell you that I love you whenever and if ever you want me to.” 

That’s too much of a chick moment for him to reasonably respond to, but he reaches for Cas’ hand instead. He’s not actually entirely sure they’ve ever done the handholding thing before (at least not in public, even if it is late and they’re in a largely deserted parking lot walking back to the car), which is kinda weird now he thinks about it, but it’s nice. Cas doesn’t mention it, anyway, and lets Dean continue to roll his eyes about Cas being a fucking sap, like Dean isn’t probably worse most of the time. 

It’s a good date. 

* 

“Man, I am so pumped for when we can get back to arguing about regular stuff rather than all this crap,” Dean says, on a Tuesday night when Dean was having a _bad day_ which turned into another wave of hurt and frustration and a barely diverted argument about all of it all over again. 

“What regular stuff?” Cas asks, sat at his laptop on the sofa and only just listening, because he has a whole bunch of stuff which has to be done _tonight_ , which means he just didn’t have the time to indulge Dean in his neediness right that second (hence the nearly-argument). 

Dean actually feels a hell of a lot better now. Cas more or less yelled how much he’d prefer to be with _Dean_ rather than cosied up with his work laptop, but that wasn’t currently an option, which he’d really needed to hear. 

“Laundry, rent, pay-per-view porn, that kind of thing.” 

“We’ve never argued about pay-per-view porn,” Cas says, looking up with the familiar confused expression. 

“Well maybe we should,” 

“What’s there to argue about?” 

“I actually have no idea,” Dean says, “Maybe it’s a straight couple thing.” 

“Can we reschedule date night next week?” 

“You got some hot date I don’t know about?” Dean asks, glancing up from the stack of crap he has to read before he starts his new job _tomorrow_ , which he’s already read but is going over all over again, because he’s sort of terrified of fucking up. They pretty much need the money coming in at this point. 

“One of my work colleagues has organised a drinks thing for his birthday next Friday,” 

“Huh,” Dean says, “Guess I should try and pull some plans out my ass for Friday, then. Which colleague?” 

“Alfie,” Cas replies, shutting his own laptop to look at him. He’s been working solidly (meaning squinting at a load of emails he’s yet to reply to) since they diverted the argument, and working solidly during the period of time between Cas returning from work and the argument, because Zachariah is once again being a total douchebag. 

“Do I know Alfie?” 

“He started several months ago, so I doubt it,” Castiel says, “If you don’t want to be alone I could…” 

“Dude, if there’s one sure thing I know, it’s that we need some frigging friends,” Dean says, “Go socialise.” 

“You could come,” 

“Not a good idea,” Dean says, standing up so he can go join Cas by the sofa, now he’s not competing for attention with his frigging laptop. Cas sends him the usual inquisitive look. “Dude, we’re re-honeymooning and we’re disgusting.” 

“Re-honeymooning is not a thing, Dean.” 

“It is,” Dean says, “You wanna make friends with these people, don’t be the guy who brings the boyfriend and then can’t quit staring at him.” Cas sighs and puts his laptop down on the coffee table, looking up. “You worried about this?” 

“I’m not very good at socialising,” Cas says, “Alfie is… nice and Uriel is relatively amusing, but the others… I don’t _know_ them Dean.” 

“That’s why you go get a drink with them and _get_ to know them,” Dean says, making space for himself on the sofa, too, “You got this, Cas. And if it’s going badly I’ll ring you with an emergency and fuck you so hard you can’t remember a damn thing about those assholes.” 

“They’re perfectly nice people,” 

“Then it’ll be fine,” Dean says, “Cas, it’s messed up that we’re so frigging anti-social that you’re getting stressed about a couple of drinks. We need to quit living in a bubble.” 

“What are you going to do?” 

“Could see if Garth’s free,” Dean says, even though the idea isn’t particularly appealing, “He grows on you. Or I could, I dunno, get out there. Make some friends.” 

“Hmm,” Cas says, but he’s definitely not listening to Dean anymore, because he’s busy undoing Dean’s damn belt. He’d be insulted if he wasn’t totally okay with whatever Cas wanted to do that didn’t involve him wearing clothes. 

“Cas, I don’t think taking my pants off is going to help me make friends.” 

“I sincerely hope not,” Cas says, smiling at him, “You called it my Achilles heel,” 

“I called what your Achilles heel?” 

“Oral sex.” 

Of fucking course that would be when his phone rings, right when his evening’s looking up. He closes his eyes in frustration for a half a second before he snaps himself out of it, because he is starting a new job tomorrow and this could be about something important. It would be pretty damn late for them to be calling him to cancel or change some details or something, but you never know. 

“Hold that thought,” Dean says, pointing at him before digging his cell out his pocket. “It’s Sam,” 

“Answer it,” Cas says, “My weaknesses can wait.” 

“They better wait,” Dean says, doing his jeans back up before answering the phone, because it just seems kind of wrong to talk to Sam like that. 

It’s nothing ground breaking, just Sam checking in and rambling on about some girl – Sarah, Dean’s pretty sure – who’s studying art history and seems nice, his studies, his creepy roommate and the rest of his life. Cas makes himself comfortable more or less laid on Dean’s lap halfway through and Dean doesn’t exactly _mean_ to wind up running his fingers through his hair, but that sort of thing tends to happen when Cas is around. 

“You sound better than you have for a while,” Sam says, after he’s run out of steam talking about one of his required credits which he really doesn’t like. Talking to Sam makes him realise how frigging glad he is that he’s not working his ass off in college anymore. Really. “What’s been _up_ with you, Dean?” 

“Just a prolonged argument with Cas. We’re all sorted now, Sammy, don’t worry.” 

“What about?” 

“Pay-per-view-porn,” 

“What?” 

“Uh, inside joke. Nothing serious,” Dean says, as Cas snorts from his lap, “He’s right here, I’ll put you on speaker.” 

“Hello, Sam.” 

“When are you coming to visit?” Sam asks, “It’s been ages.” 

“Actually, I’m starting a new job, like, tomorrow, but the hours are pretty flexible. Maybe in a couple of weekend’s time.” 

“You’re starting a new job?” Sam asks, “What happened to your old one?” 

“Uh, quit,” Dean says, clearing his throat, “Anyway, never mind that. No big deal.” 

“Will you be able to get the time off this time, Cas?” Sam asks and, yeah, Dean is _so_ glad that Sam is in the dark about everything that’s gone on in the past few months, because he wouldn’t be offering up that kind of welcome otherwise. 

Cas looks at him, all serious and intent for a few seconds. 

“Dean, do you want me to come?” 

“You know I always want you to –” 

“ – Dean,” Sam cuts across him before he has a chance to finish his sentence, the usual bitchface-tint to his voice that makes Dean miss the hell out of his younger brother. Man, he hopes they can visit soon. 

“Obviously, we’d have to rearrange date night that week,” 

“Date night?” Sam asks, incredulous. 

“I’ll speak to Zachariah about what holiday I can book tomorrow.” 

“Awesome,” Dean says, leaning forward to kiss him. 

“You’re disgusting, Dean,” Sam says, “And I’m hanging up.” 

“I told you we were disgusting,” Dean says, after Sam makes good on his promise of hanging up. Dean doesn’t feel particularly bad about it, given that they’d been on the phone for a good forty minutes and what he’d nearly interrupted with his phone call in the first place. “Re-honeymooning, I’m telling you.” 

“You shouldn’t lie to your brother,” 

“Get over here and show me your weaknesses,” 

“I don’t know, Dean, it’s getting late and you have a big day tomorrow.” Cas says, turning to face him looking far too smug for Dean to buy into the act. 

“Ass,” Dean shoots back, putting his phone on the coffee table with Cas’ laptop. No distractions. No stupid outside problems pushing in. Just them, rebuilding and all of the rest of it. 

“Maybe we are disgusting,” Cas says, “It’s probably advisable that we get it out of our systems before we visit your brother.”

“This is what I’m telling you, man,” Dean says, as Cas undoes his jeans again. “I’m just being practical.” 

* 

“Looks like I do have social plans, after all,” Dean says, stepping out from the bedroom with his cell in his right hand. 

“Garth has become free?” Cas asks, from where he’s putting away the plates from dinner and breakfast. He’s definitely mocking him, which is sort of hilarious given Cas is actually fully anxious about going out for drinks with his work colleagues. Not that Dean exactly blames him, per say, because he’s had just over a week at his new job and he hasn’t exactly made any bosom buddies yet. Still, it’s cute. 

“Uh, no,” Dean says, “That was Benny. He’s back in town. Alone.” 

“What happened with Andrea?” 

“You won’t believe me,” 

“Try me,” Cas says, putting the last plate away and turning to face him. He’s changed out of his work clothes and he looks good for it. Almost feels like they’re back to a few years ago and Cas is going to some bar to get laid (and _how_ they went from that Cas to a Cas who’s nervous about going out for drinks with a group of people he knows Dean’s not entirely sure, but it sort of reminds him how much him leaving totally knocked the guy’s confidence. Dean totally and utterly failed him which isn’t a nice reminder, but he’s going to fix it. All of it). 

“Well she’s been cheating on him,” Dean says, which makes Cas’ expression crumple slightly, but, well… that’s kind of what happened. He didn’t have many options with the word choices, there. “With his old man.” 

“His _father_?” 

“Technically, they’re not actually related,” Dean says, “Kind of like my Bobby, but with a more twisted relationship than the one I have with Dad. So, yeah, serious shit hitting the fan. He’s hauling up at a motel till he can get an apartment sorted. Figured he’d start over here. Good as place as any, I guess.” 

“Does he need somewhere to stay?” Cas asks, voice purposefully mild. 

“Cas, we’re not in a good place for house guests right now. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wish we could help the guy out, I do… but we’re only just getting this sorted. And you’ve always been kind of crazy about Benny,” 

“You did sleep with him after we became involved,” 

“Well, no Cas, I didn’t, and you _really_ think you get to bring that up?” Dean snaps, before he really has a chance to stop himself. They’re not supposed to be doing that. They’re not supposed to be throwing the various awful things they did each other when they’re pissed and it’s like the _second_ time he’s slipped up this week and he really is trying. 

“Dean,” 

“Fuck, sorry. Passed it, definitely passed it,” Dean says, turning away from him to pace the small section of carpet between the kitchen and the sofa. He needs to get a handle on his frigging temper and he especially needs to do it _now_ , when Cas is already stressed out. 

“Dean,” 

“Okay, maybe like ninety percent passed it.” 

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Cas says, coming up behind him and wrapping his arms around his back. Fuck. “And I deserved the retort. Continue about Benny.” 

“Not much else. He’s not doing so great, understandably. Gonna head over here and keep him company whilst he gets drunk and stop him calling either of them and whatever,” Dean says, “Which is pretty ironic, I mean…” Dean sucks in a breath, “Not that it’s remotely the same.” 

“It’s going to be fine, Dean.” 

“You trying to convince me or yourself?” Dean asks, turning around and forcing himself to smile. 

“I need to head out,” Cas says, leaning forward to kiss him, “Be as late as you need to be.” 

“When did we become the kiss goodbye couple, anyway?” Dean grumbles, as Cas retrieves his trench coat from the back of the sofa (and why the _hell_ can’t he just hang the damn thing up instead of leaving it everywhere?) and pulls it on. 

“I’d estimate about the time you left, I cheated on you and we nearly broke up,” Cas says, with another smile. “Have a good evening, Dean.” 

* 

His new job is less well paid, fewer and more unpredictable hours but probably a lot more enjoyable. The money thing is probably going to become a problem soon, even if Cas nearly started yelling at him all over again when he tried to pay for his half of the rent for one of the absentee-months where he’d been too caught up in his Dad to remember (he hadn’t even _realised_ he hadn’t paid until they sat down and went over their finances and he noticed that Cas had paid _all_ the rent for the last month of his absence; no frigging wonder Cas was beginning to think he wasn’t coming back). 

At least he got the damn job. 

Besides, he feels a lot less like he’s being suffocated (although he’s only been there a few weeks, so there’s still time), even if the joy of being able to have pyjama days during the week is beginning to wear a little thin. It would be a lot more fun if he could persuade Cas to play hooky with him, but he’s yet to manage to convince him. He’s too invested in being a responsible adult and all that crap. 

Dean’s eating the leftovers they were supposed to be eating for dinner (but it’s Friday so he can definitely talk Cas into take away) and watching say yes to the dress, because it’s weirdly addictive and because he’s too lazy to change the channel. Then his phone’s ringing. He pulls his phone out of his pocket to come face to face with Cas’ contact photo (a selfie Cas took in the driver’s seat of his baby when Dean left him unsupervised to pay for gas; obviously he’s never let him actually _drive_ the impala). Cas _never_ calls him during the day. Texts, maybe, but never calls. The last time was probably when Dean started yelling at him about being in contact with Bobby. 

“What’s up, dude?” 

“Dean, turn on the news,” Cas says, deep and gravelly as always. It doesn’t sound all that much like a _bad_ turn on the news, even though his stomach’s turned over before he can catch the subtleties of Cas’ tone. Dean’s heard enough of delivering-bad-news Cas of late for him to know that this isn’t that, though. It’s at least not going to be as bad as ‘I slept with someone else’, whatever the hell it is. 

“There’s a lot of terrorism today?” Dean asks, frowning at the TV, “I don’t…” He stops short when the BREAKING NEWS bar scrolls over and… holy shit. Holy fucking shit. “Holy crap.” 

“Love wins.” 

“Damn fucking straight it does,” Dean says, leaning forward, “Cas, what does this…” 

“Marriage Equality is a constitutional right, Dean,” Cas says, and Dean would bet his life savings (like he’s ever had any of those) that he’s got one of those eye-crinkling smiles stretching his gorgeous fucking mouth. “As of today, the whole of America has gay marriage.” 

“Crap,” Dean says, “Everywhere?” 

“Yes,” 

“That’s…” 

“Awesome?” 

“Yeah, Cas, that’s fucking awesome,” Dean says, his throat tightening. They’ve crossed over from terrorism to pictures of people celebrating outside the Supreme Court and it’s, well, it’s frigging emotional is what it is. 

“Every single one of our friends can marry their partners in any state they want to, Dean.” 

“You think this pushes forward our five year schedule then you got another thing coming.” Dean says but, shit, he feels like his chest’s splitting open. He didn’t even realise he cared all that much about marriage equality. In the grand scheme of bullshit he’s had to deal with for not being strictly heterosexual that was pretty low on his lists of concerns but… no, this is important. This is frigging huge. It’s a beautiful day to be alive. 

“Given recent events, I’m surprised you would consider it within the next decade.” 

“Cas, get your ass home. I want to kiss you so bad right now,” Dean says, “In public. Wearing a fucking pride flag. In those goddamn panties.” 

“That was an excellent deflection,” 

“I said behind us I mean behind us,” Dean says because, yeah, every so often he wakes up in the middle of the night petrified that they’re just kidding himself, gropes for Cas in the dark and invariably winds up accidentally punching him in the face or waking him up in attempt to cuddle. Whatever. 

“We should go out and celebrate.” 

“Hell yeah,” Dean says, “And I ate our dinner, anyway. I’ll make a reservation or something.” 

“But date night is schedule for tomorrow, Dean.” 

“Quit it, Sasstiel,” Dean says, “We can go on two frigging dates if we want. Fuck the system.” 

“But the system has bought us marriage equality, Dean,” Cas says, “I’ve got to go. Zachariah is – ” 

He doesn’t ever get to know what Zachariah was doing, because Cas has hung up before he’s finished the damn sentence, but Dean’s not entirely sure he cares about douchebags like Zachariah on a day like today, anyway. 

Charlie has text him a whole fucking rainbow of LGBT emojis by the time he’s off the phone. Dean replies asking where the hell she got them from because, well, it seems situationally-appropriate. In general, he thoroughly disapproves… but, hell, today he can make an exception. 

* 

They wind up at the 'pretentious, overpriced, asshole’ bar because apparently Cas follows them on twitter (Deans not going anywhere near that) and they announced insane drink offers to celebrate the supreme court ruling about five minutes after it was announced. He's so fucking pumped that he doesn't even care that Cas comes back to their table with two rainbow cocktails (it helps that he got Dean a beer too). They've apparently called it a long marriage iced tea which is possibly the worst pun of all time, but it's potently alcohol and, hey, they did make it look like a damn rainbow so kudos for effort. They're squeezed onto the table with the bunch of KU students that are still around and ventured as far out from campus (including Garth, who’s possibly more happy about the ruling than any LGTB person in this joint, which is creepy), but they're mostly ignoring them in favour of high grade PDA. Dean's never been this way in his whole goddamn life, but the atmosphere is making him want to take frigging selfies of them making out or some shit. His _rights_ include the right to marry someone of whatever gender. In real terms, he's not sure it makes a whole lot of difference to his life, but it's the frigging principle of the thing. 

"It's a good job love wins," Dean comments, nodding at the rainbow drink with a raise of the eyebrow. He's got Cas tucked under his arm and by the time he's finished his long marriage ice tea and some purple shots the barmaid is just giving out, he's in the mood to honest to God dance. They're playing fucking ABBA, for God's sake, like just because he's into dick he's gotta feel like getting down to Dancing Queen. It's a blessed relief when they swap over to Cher (which is no Led Zeppelin, but it's a big step up from ABBA) and Dean's just dragging Cas to his feet to get this party started when - 

"Dean," Cas freezes. "That's the man I slept with.” 

It is _that bar_ so Dean’s not entirely sure why neither of them saw it coming but, here they are, and Dean can tell who Cas means by the way the guy is surreptitiously glancing in their direction. 

"You mean like, last month slept with. Him. Dude he's not even you're type." 

"I... I need to go and apologise." 

"No, Cas, you need to stay here so I don't lose my goddamn mind." 

"You are the one who keeps saying it’s behind us." 

"It is when he's not literally standing right behind us." 

“I used him,” Cas says, and he’s near enough _pouting_. There’s too many people crammed into this joint for him to really think properly and, maybe the clientele isn’t as stuck up and pretentious as they usually are (fucking hipsters, man), and maybe it’s not as overpriced right now either, but he’d still rather be just about anywhere else. _Why_ he let Cas talk him into here, he doesn’t know. 

“He doesn’t know that,” 

“Dean, I vomited in his apartment and then practically ran away. I think he probably knows.” 

“What _good_ is it gonna do, Cas?” 

“It will make me feel better if I’m able to apologies.” 

It's a mark of how frigging whipped he is that it takes a few moments of prolonged eye contact before he gives in. Cas has never regretted sex before in his life (except probably the time his high school ex gave him chlamydia, but that wasn't Cas' own fault) and, well, if it helps Cas get stop hating himself for it then it’s probably going to help him both… but, goddamn, Dean would much prefer for the guy to spontaneously combust or disappear forever or just be somewhere that wasn’t _here_

"Goddamnit it, Cas, fine." Dean says, reaching forwards and kissing him thoroughly, for his own piece of mind and because he knows One Night Stand Guy is watching them. "But I'm coming." 

"Would you prefer to urinate on me? It might be a more efficient way of marking your territory." 

"Hey man I'm not being irrationally jealous here," 

"I know," Cas says, turning to stare openly at the other guy looking distinctly uncomfortable. The guy notices too. He's probably been glancing at them through the whole exchange. 

"Let's get this freak show on the road," Dean says, hands falling to Cas' hips as they try and navigate their way through the bar. It's packed. Pretty damn colourful, too, with every other person wearing some kind of rainbow. 

"Hello," Cas says, channelling some serious socially-awkward-Castiel vibes. 

"It's Castiel, right?" The guy says. He's not, well, he's not unattractive, but he's definitely not Cas' usual type and he's definitely no match for Cas' blue eyes and bedhead. Dean's not sure he blames him for trying it on. He probably would have done. Hell he tries it on with Cas most nights of the week (for all him leaving and the cheating thing did a hell of a lot of structural damage, it sure gave their sex life a reboot. And their foundations are a lot more solid on the flip side). Said guy turns his gaze on Dean instead, eyes understandably apprehensive. Dean gets that this is stemming from Cas' good intentions, but he's pretty damn sure it's only going to make things more uncomfortable for all of them. 

"Yes," Cas says, "This is Dean, my boyfriend," Cas says. 

The guy nods and looks to be looking for a way to ask the question without looking like he's asking the question. 

"Been together long?" 

"Just over eighteen months," Dean smiles, just to see him glance between the pair of them and begin the moral dilemma. 

"I wanted to apologise for my behaviour the last time I saw you, Bartholomew." 

"Bartholomew," Dean repeats, "You sure know how to pick 'em, Cas." 

"So you... know," 

"Oh yeah, buddy, I know all about your little meet cute with my boyfriend." 

"Look I'm not looking for any trouble -" 

"Dean," Cas says, sending him a look, "That's not the reason we're here. I just wanted to apologies for my conduct. I acted completely outside my set of morals due to a prior argument and my own stupidity." 

"He's also sorry about the subpar sex. Says it was probably nothing to do with you," 

"Dean," Cas says again. 

"Okay," Bartholomew says, glancing between the pair of them. 

"Cas how about you get me a drink,” Dean says, not breaking eye contact with this Bartholomew asshole. He doesn’t like him. Dean’s pretty sure there was no real risk of that happening anyway, but he _extra_ doesn’t like him. 

"I got the last round," 

"I paid for food." 

"Because you ate the leftovers we were going to eat." 

"Which I cooked," 

"Because you are currently working less hours." 

"Here," Dean says, pulling out a note and passing it over with a tight smile. "Less rainbow, more whiskey." 

Cas glances between them before deciding that Dean isn't going to kill the guy and heading towards the bar. Bartholomew looks slightly less sure about Dean's homicidal tendencies. 

“This isn't going to make any sense to you, Bart, I’m gonna call you Bart, but all I need you to do here is accept the guys apology. He’s happy, you’re happy, I’m happy. Capisce?” 

"I didn't push him into anything." 

"Oh believe me I know," Dean says, with a tight smile. 

"I wasn't aware he had a boyfriend," 

"Well, here he is," Dean says, "I trust that you're a decent guy, Bart, so all you gotta do is accept the damn apology, tell him you're cool with how the whole thing went down, and we'll both be leaving you to your soda." 

"It’s a Malibu and coke," 

"My mistake, we'll leave you to your _teenage girl drink._ " Dean says and, maybe his voice got a little heated towards the back end of his sentence, but he’s virtually being a saint about this whole fucking thing. 

"Dean," Cas says, turning up again with another goddamn rainbow cocktail. 

“I said whiskey." 

"She put whiskey in it," Cas says, then passes what Dean's assuming is another Malibu and coke towards Bartholomew. He's not in love with the fact that Cas remembers his drinks order, but that's just Cas. 

"Castiel," Bartholomew says, "Don't worry about your conduct. Everyone can act out of character some days." 

"Thank you," Cas says. 

"Now can we just drink to marriage equality like every other damn LGBT person in this joint?" 

"Yes, Dean." 

"To marriage equality," Bartholomew says, raising his glass. 

"To keeping the divorce lawyers in buisness." Dean adds, "And the number of folks getting hitched this weekend who are gonna regret it next month." 

"Don't be cynical Dean," Cas says, smiling at him slightly, "Hashtag love wins." 

"You start saying Hashtags out loud, we're getting divorced." 

"I think the premarital version is simply called breaking up," Cas says, leaning into his side and smiling at him. Dean can feel this Bartholomew guy watching them and he's probably judging Dean for being a forgiving chump, but Dean doesn't actually feel all that much like a chump right now. He feels like mother fucking batman, because marriage equality just became his right, and because he is gonna work it out with Cas (they're most of the way already) and because sometimes love does win. 

Rainbow whiskey Cocktails, however, taste like crap. 

* 

“You didn’t punch him in the face,” Cas says, when they’re back in their apartment, slightly tipsy (and only that sober because they were out for a while and Dean couldn’t take drinking anything else with that much sugar in it), and watching Pride on the sofa. Clearly, Cas’ idea, but it was a step up from his other suggestions. “Bartholomew.” 

He sounds pretty awed by that fact. 

“No I got who you meant,” Dean says, “Just don’t know why you left me alone with him if you thought I was gonna punch him in the face.” 

“I would have punched him the face,” Cas says, and he’s probably the drunker out of the two of them, because his words are slurring and, anyway, he speaks in a different rhythm when he’s drunk. “If it were me.” 

“Well that wasn’t exactly gonna help the apology stick.” 

“It really is behind us.” 

“What?” 

“Dean, you… you didn’t punch him in the face.” 

“I know, Cas.” 

“You _have_ forgive me,” Cas says, “You… I didn’t ruin everything.” 

“Looks like,” Dean says, throwing his spare arm over Cas and pulling him closer because, well, Cas is still hurting. “You reckon you can forgive you, now?” 

“Dean,” Cas says, making a lunge for his laptop that nearly sends them both tipping off the sofa. “If we’re fine then I –” 

“ – we are fine, I keep telling you –“ 

“ – have something to show you,” Cas says, flipping open his laptop, getting the password wrong twice before starting up the internet. 

“Is it pay-per-view-porn?” Dean asks, then feels like a jackass the second Cas’ bookmarks come up, because they’re all frigging one bed apartment in and around Lawrence and… They were _talking about it_ before everything went down, because it made a hell of a lot more financial sense. Sure, Bobby and Sam came to visit sometimes, but not often enough to have a spare bedroom and, sure, maybe sometimes one of them was relegated to the other room after an argument… but, hell, as long as they had a sofa. 

It had seemed too much like bad timing afterwards, though, even if they could have done with the cheaper rent. 

“I mentioned we were thinking about moving to Uriel before you left,” Cas says, “He persisted in asking me about it, so I said we just hadn’t found anywhere because I didn’t want to talk about it. Then Alfie heard one of our conversation and keeps sending me links, he’s very… enthusiastic, and…” 

“This place looks pretty sweet,” Dean says, throat tight, “Cheap, good location.” 

“Exactly,” Cas says, “Dean, if it’s still not a good time…” 

“No, I… actually think it’s a damn good time,” Dean says, swallowing, “It’s unfurnished.” 

“I enjoyed the thought of arguing about assembling flat pack furniture with you,” Cas says, voice still drunk and loose but, hey, that is a pretty great idea. That sounds pretty awesome, actually. “I assume you consider yourself to be above reading the instructions.” 

“Cas, no one reads those,” 

“They do, Dean,” Cas says, smiling up at him, “But if buying furniture together is too serious…” 

“Reckon I can handle it,” Dean says, scrolling down, “Hey, look, they allow pets. We could get a dog.” 

“That’s inadvisable,” Cas says, continuing only when Dean sends him a questioning look, “They approve less adoptions to couples with pets and often require that they’re removed from the environment.” 

Dean chokes. 

“Give a guy some fucking warning, Cas.” 

“We’ve talked about it before.” 

“Abstractly,” Dean pretty much splutters, “Fuck. That’s still a long way off, dude.” 

“Long enough for you to become very attached to our theoretical dog,” Cas says, shutting his laptop and returning it to the coffee table. 

“Why am _I_ the one that’s attached?” Cas just sends him a look. “Okay, fine. No dog. Let’s… book a viewing when we’re sober and talk about something less likely to give me a damn heart attack.” 

It’s then that Sam calls him. It’s too late for a phone call, really, but then Sam’s a student. If he’s calling Dean _now_ it’s either a drunk dial or the end of a library stint. He begins with a “Congratulations,” and he doesn’t sound particularly drunk, so Dean’s reckoning a library stint. He probably hadn’t looked at the news until now or he’d have gone some sappy text hours ago. 

“Thanks, Sammy,” Dean says, “Until now I didn’t feel like my personal contribution to the Supreme Court ruling was being appreciated, but now you’ve said _congratulations_ , well, now I can pat myself on the back for a job well done.” 

“Chill out, Dean, I was just …” 

“Well, it’s patronising,” 

“Excuse your brother,” Cas says, taking the phone out of his hands and putting the damn thing on speaker. Cas is definitely pretty drunk, actually. He probably wouldn’t have mention the whole freaky adoption thing, otherwise (although, Dean totally wouldn’t have known that had Cas not mentioned it and that’s pretty valuable information to have at hand; he probably does need to look into that kind of stuff). “He’s irritable because I’m forcing him to watch Pride.” 

“Cas is drunk,” 

“So you have been out celebrating?” 

“ Food and drinks. I’m not soulless,” Dean returns. “We haven’t exchanged congratulatory blow jobs yet, so make whatever you’ve got to say quick, Sam.” 

"I thought date night was on Saturdays now though?" Sam says, and apparently Dean has been using his gross Sam out with sex card way too much, because that was a complete none-reaction. Also, his little brother is a shit and he should never have let him find out about date night. He's never living that down. 

"Screw you, bitch." 

“Whatever, jerk. Anything new with you two?” 

“Always,” Dean grins, “Brighter and better things all the damn time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I now declare this angst fest officially over. Tune in next time (probably tomorrow) for teeth rotting, time skipping fluff. I'm not even a little bit sorry.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this got long. I'm not even sorry. Not even a little.
> 
> There's also references to various other bits I've written in between the time jump (you'll see) which may or may not wind up being posted at some point. Who even knows anymore.

_September, 2015_

“Cas, I don’t know whatever the hell it is that’s got you worked up, but you’ve got about a _minute_ to sort it the fuck out, or I swear I’ll…” 

“I am wondering whether we should tell Sam,” 

“And you’re bringing this up _now_? Now? Don’t you think we’ve got a more _pressing problem_ right this second?” 

“Dean, we haven’t taken off yet.” 

“Which is why you’ve got thirty seconds to talk this out before I am _done_. And we’re not talking to Sam.” 

“Why?” 

“You can tell you’re the frigging youngest. He’s not supposed to know about my weaknesses, dude. I’m going for fearless and emotionally robust, here.” 

“Has your brother ever seen you on an aircraft?” 

“Like once, maybe, and…shut up. You remember how pissed he was about Sonny’s at graduation? We can’t tell him about everything else without the backstory. Pretty sure Sam and my Dad are actually talking right now, which is damn near a miracle. That’s not gonna stick if he gets a _whiff_ of any of this.” 

“For a good reason, Dean.” 

“We’d have to explain the whole mess, in detail, for him to have a chance of getting it and then it’s not exactly a guarantee. He’s nineteen, dude. The most serious relationship he’s ever has is with his freaking law textbooks. He’s a mature nineteen year old, maybe, but he’s also got a protective steak the size of the goddamn Mississippi. We'd be reliving the whole frigging situation and, ah, shit. Fuck, Cas. Fuck.” 

“Do you remember when you had that panic attack during sophomore year?” 

“I don’t know on what planet you think this is actually helping right now, Cas, but it isn’t _this one_.” 

“What did you do to calm down?” 

“You tried to reteach me how to breathe, then you made me wear your trench coat and have tea and toast,” 

“I didn’t _make_ you wear my trench coat.” 

“Cas, this is an SOS, okay?” 

“Breathe, Dean.” 

“I am _frigging_ breathing.” 

“Sam is probably going to find out eventually.” 

“Maybe when we’re pushing forty, with a couple of kids and a people carrier, taking trips to frigging Disneyland and we can honestly say, no big deal, Sammy, what’s walking out and an instance of infidelity between life partners –“ 

“ – I get the impression you don’t think that’s going to happen,” 

“I hate Disney and I aint driving a shitty car for no one." 

“Sam did offer to visit us instead.” 

“Dude, we have like half a room of furniture in our whole apartment. I can deal with this crappy flight. Everything’s _fine_ , I just gotta… shit. What was that? Is that supposed to happen?” 

“You do seem completely fine,” 

“Will you just hold my damn hand and stop fucking talking already?” 

*****

_July, 2029_

Claire who, for all intents and purposes, has much lower care needs than her big sister (without the allowance for the age thing which, yeah, they didn't anticipate a four month year old being so much more needy than a twenty month old, which was admittedly kinda dumb) is still nevertheless being as fussy as anything. Dean's been trying to get her to sleep for a good hour, but she starts wailing anytime Dean tries to put her down. She won't let him hand her to Sam or Jess either, and Cas has got a lap of sleeping four year old. So he's stuck holding her squirm and babble discontentedly whilst trying to drink his frigging beer. It's too damn hot, which is probably Claire's problem in the first instance. Dean’s with her on that one. 

Sam is virtually oblivious to his unhappy niece because he's busy catching Dean up on all his college friends, because Sam is still at the stage where he's in contact with them (not that Dean lost contact with all of his, exactly, just… most of them) and Dean's pretending to care. 

"I don't know why she's still planning the wedding, given he cheated on her," 

“– Sam its not always that simple," Dean says, freeing one arm from under Claire to stretch it out. Her growth is a good thing because it finally ‘puts her into a healthy percentile for her ages group’ (Cas’ baby books talking, there) so Dean’s not exactly complaining but, damn, he's beginning to notice the difference. 

"What do you mean?" Sam asks. He's utterly indifferent to the California heat-wave, but Dean's hot and irritable and wants to get them all back in the air con. Particularly Emma, because she freckles, and Dean’s betting she burns, too, but he doesn’t need the proof to go along with it. There’s not enough SPF 50 in the world to make him quit overthinking it. 

"Cheating," Dean says, and, holy shit, Claire's eyes are finally drooping shut. If they get her down for a nap now they're significantly more likely to get her sleeping through the night (god knows how that makes any kind of sense, but that's the way it usually happens), and then they might actually be able to have sex again which, hey, miracles do happen. "Depends what kind of cheating we're talking about here." 

"Why?" Sam asks, frowning at him. "Dean, infidelity isn't something you can brush under a carpet." 

"Not trying to start a debate about it," Dean says, "Just, let the girl make her own call. She's the one with the facts." 

"What do you know about it?" Sam asks. 

Dean just shrugs. 

"I cheated on your brother," Cas says. Dean sets his beer down with a click and turns to look at Cas who, bless his fucking heart, has covered Emma's ears with the palms of his hands before speaking. In an ideal world, he probably would have just kept his mouth shut, but then again this is Cas and this is also ancient history. It doesn’t _matter_ anymore. Hasn’t mattered for nearly a decade. 

"Hate to break it to you, Cas, but we got another one over here." 

"Given Claire is still working towards understanding the concept of 'goodbye' I doubt she is going to internalise this conversation very much," Cas says, before turning back to Sam, who's looking at the pair of them like they've gone totally bat shit crazy. 

"She knows goodbye," Dean says and _also_ by some miracle, he’s actually closed her eyes. She’s _asleep_ and Dean didn’t know what a real sense of achievement felt like until they started this parenthood gig, really. Getting Claire to sleep his a gold medal achievement. 

“A long time ago,” Dean says, which gets him a disbelieving expression, "Sam, it was complicated. It was also one time over a decade ago." 

"What happened?" 

"Long ass story," 

"Dean, don't say ass in front of our four year old." 

"You just repeated ass in front of our four year old," Dean shoots back, because he's immature as anything. 

"Dean," 

"Why didn't you tell me?" Sam asks, which is an exhausting question already. There’s a hell of a lot of reasons why he didn’t tell Sam about any of it, but it doesn’t really seem like they matter anymore. They buried their father a long time ago. He worked it out with Cas. There’s not a whole lot else to say. 

"Dean thought you and your family disliking me would make the situation more complicated." 

"Which, I was right, by the way. You're already eyeing Cas up like you're looking for his weak spots. Come on Sam, it was a lifetime ago, and if we'd just packed it in we wouldn't have had act of this. Claire and Emma, for a start." 

"And you... just moved passed it." 

"Eventually," Dean says, "Would have thought you'd be more pissed 'bout us screwing on your couch when you took Emma to the park." 

"That didn't happen," Cas puts in, before Sam can really get into his bitch face, "Claire cried for about half an hour because of the heat, then Dean engaged in the adult equivalent. No sex was had." 

"Guy can dream," Dean says, turning to smile at Cas for a second. Cas looks affectionately frustrated and is absent mindedly untangling knots from Emma's hair, and Dean loves him so fucking much. 

"Why?" Sam asks, "Were you just... bored?" 

"Of Dean?" 

"Bitch, please." 

"Dean, language, children." 

"They're asleep," Dean shrugs. 

"I just... wow," Sam says, looking between them, to Emma, to Claire. "I always thought you were so solid." 

"We are, ninety nine percent of time," Dean says, "And who else is gonna put up with my sorry ass?" 

"So you stayed because you didn't want to be alone?" 

"I stayed cause I wanted to be with Cas, specifically, and cause I wasn't exactly an angel, and cause it was worth working through, Sam. If you think you and Jess are never gonna hit a roadblock or seven then you've got a shock ahead. That's the one point we talked about hanging in the towel in twelve and a half years, and that's damned impressive." 

"Are you going to try putting Claire down?" 

"Man, I dunno, she just got to sleep." 

"The book says unless we're firm she will internalise needy behaviour." 

"She'd a baby, she's however many pounds of pure need." 

"She won't sleep unless one of us is holding her if you spoil her with affection and physical contact." 

"Hark, who's on at me for spoiling our daughter again? Sammy, write this down for future reference." 

"You spent half an hour braiding Emma's hair this morning whilst your breakfast went cold, Dean." 

"He told me that was you," Sam says, lips quirking upwards. 

"We have microwaves for a reason," Dean says, narrowing his eyes at both of them. "Sorry Claire-bear," Dean tells Claire, "Padre says you've got to sleep in your stroller." 

"Please stop calling me padre," Cas says, "It is not going to catch on." 

Claire, predictably, wakes up. And starts wailing. 

"I know, angel," Dean tells her, "It will catch on, don't listen to him." 

"Claire crying," Emma says, tugging on his sleeve and, hey, she's up to. It's a regular family reunion. 

"That she is, Princess," 

"I'll take her for a walk," Cas says, standing up. "Emma, would you like to come with me or stay with Uncle Sam and your father?" 

Emma looks at the wailing baby, then at Sam, then back to Cas. 

"Stay with Daddy." 

"The lady has spoken," Dean says 

"One of them is speaking quite loudly," Cas says, plucking Claire out of his arms and grabbing the stroller with one hand in a movement Dean's never mastered, heading back through the restaurant to the exit. 

"Emma, your juice arrived whilst you were sleeping. You wanna drink it before it gets all warm and yucky?" 

"Colouring?" 

"Got your back," Dean says, dredging the colour book out of his backpack (which, yeah, isn't a testament to his street cred, but kids need a lot of crap apparently) and pushing them toward her. She has to kneel on the chair to reach the table, but seems content enough. 

"He left us here so we could talk, didn't he?" Sam says, watching Emma with her Disney colouring book. 

"Probably," Dean says, taking another sip of his beer. "But, keep it PG. Four year old friendly, if possible." 

"I just.... how did you move past it? After he..." 

"Dunno, Sam. But we did, and I can't imagine my life different. Anyway, why would I want to? So if you're gonna hold this against Cas then..." 

"It’s not my place is it?" 

"Don't mean you're not doing a damn good job of it," Dean grumbles, "There were a lot of factors involved. We both screwed up. Cas was responding to a shitty situation that I put him by responding to another shitty situation. It escalated. It wasn’t that simple. We figured it was worth working through all of it so we did, and that was a damn good decision. What?" 

"Nothing," Sam says and then, "It's just, you're surprisingly good at this relationship stuff." 

"I'm married," Dean throws back, frowning at him. "You came to the service." 

"I just... get why Charlie asks you for advice." 

"Well thanks, bitch," Dean says shaking his head, then remembers that Emma's right there and Cas coerced him into agreeing not to swear via the medium of oral sex. And because Emma was (maybe) supposed to be starting school in the fall, and it would reflect badly on them if their kid talked remotely like Dean at any point in the next decade. 

"She's doing so well, Dean," Sam says, glancing at Emma and smiling. 

"She'll have caught up with the other kids soon," Dean says, "Man, I'm so frigging proud of her, you can't believe. They thought she might find Claire kinda disrupting, but she's been an angel about it. Got her pushing herself, too. Caught her trying to teach Claire the alphabet, last week. I mean, Emma gets kinda lost around the middle, but who needs that l m n p o q crap anyway? And Claire didn't know what was going on, but she was babbling right back. Cas wanted to have her writing before school, which I figured would be kinda too much for her, given she was so behind at 20 months and pretty damn traumatised, but she might get there." 

"Her motor skills seem better," 

"Yeah," Dean, "She still gets frustrated when her hands can't keep up." 

"Uncle Sammy help," Emma says, turning round and thrusting a pink crayon at him. "And Daddy." 

"How are we colouring in Mickey?" 

"Rainbow," 

"That's my girl," Dean grins. Cas comes back fifteen minutes later looking harassed and stressed, but with a sleeping Claire tucked in her stroller. He looks slightly bemused at the sight of successful lawyer Samuel Winchester being directed to colour in Mickey's ear pink and Dean colouring his left leg in yellow, whilst Emma sips on her juice and supervises. Sam is, apparently, not a good enough colourer for Emma's high standards and keeps getting told off for it. Emma has always taken things like this very seriously. 

"Meet gay pride Mickey Mouse," Dean says, pushing the colouring book towards him. "We are an advert for the gay agenda." 

"She's asleep," 

"Hallelujah," 

"Although this was achieved by agitating her to the point of exhaustion." Dean raises an eyebrow at him. "The changing table is in the woman's toilets." 

"Who'd you yell at?" 

"The manager," Cas admits, "We are getting a percent discount from our bill." 

Emma scrabbles off her seat, stretching up her hands to Cas neck. Cas picks her up and takes his seat again with Emma in his lap, Emma using the extra height to lift her elbows on the table. 

"You okay?" 

"Fine," Cas says, unconvincing enough that Dean leans forward to kiss the prickly frown off his face. 

"Daddy, yuck." 

"Now now, that kinda attitude is what's got your padre’s panties in a twist in the first place," 

"Dad doesn't wear panties!" 

"Less I ask him too," Dean says, quiet enough that Emma doesn't hear him. Sam does, though, and makes a face. "Could get used to this vacation stuff," Dean continues, even though it's sweltering hot, he's hyper paranoid about Emma burning, his beer is warm already, and he's pretty jet lagged. They probably should have moved closer to Sam whilst it was still possible. 

"You're freckling," Cas says, eyes fixed on his shoulder. 

"And you're cute, don't hear me complaining." 

"Have we finished talking about infidelity now?" 

"Sure as... purgatory hope so," 

"That doesn't make any sense," 

"Dude, I panicked," Dean says, "This stuff is hard." Cas reaches forward and curls a hand around his jaw to kiss him, and Dean is so goddamn happy it actually hurts some days. 

* 

"Uh, Dean," Sam says, standing awkwardly in front of where Dean's reapplying sun cream to Emma's cheeks. "What you were saying earlier... Jess and I talked." 

"Awesome. Glad you talk to your girlfriend sometimes." Dean says, blooping Emma's nose with a sun creamed covered hand, just because it makes her laugh. 

"About the sofa." 

"What? Oh..." Dean says, and rubs in the last of sun cream to her nose. "Hey, pumpkin, you wanna go show Dad how pretty you look in your new dress?" 

"Yes," Emma says, then she's stepping back out of his hold and walking back to their bedroom, where Cas is trying to find where they packed Claire's spare socks, because she's already kicked off and lost three and Cas has this thing where he insists she wears matching pairs. It’s incredibly dumb and Dean’s pretty sure she doesn’t need to be wearing socks at all in this heat, but he’s given up reasoning with him. 

"You were talking to Jess about us not having sex on your sofa?" Dean asks, when Emma is out of earshot. 

"Kinda?" Sam says, "I mean, Jess' best friend has a five year old son, and she was saying when he was first born she used to babysit so her best friend could have, uh, couple time." 

"Couple time." Dean repeats. 

"And I know Claire doesn't do so well with strangers yet, but she knows us... so we figured we could take them both to the park." 

"So me and Cas can screw?" Dean asks, then pauses, "In your guest bedroom?" Sam just glares at him. "Well, okay, you think you can handle them then..." 

"---- Daaaaadddddyyyyyyy," Emma says, spinning into the room, "Dad says I look very very pretty and Uncle Sam's taking us all to the park and there's swings and tomorrow we're going to Disney." 

"Your Dad give you some coffee or something?" Dean asks. 

"Park?" 

"Sorry?" Dean prompts. 

“Park?” Emma repeats, frowning him. 

“Full sentence, Princess,” 

"Daddy are we going to the park?" Emma says, with an exaggerated sigh that reminds him so much of Cas he can’t help but beam at her. 

"I think you're gonna go with Uncle Sam and Auntie Jess and Claire-bear. How's that?" 

"What are you and Dad doing?" 

"Napping," Dean says, "We're tired." 

"Pretty dress, Emma," Jess says, stepping into the room. "What's the plan?" 

"We are going to the park and Daddy and Dad are staying at home to have nap time." 

"Nap time?" Cas asks, raising an eyebrow at the three of them, another pair of tiny white socks in his hands. 

"Nap time." Dean nods, catching his eye. 

"You tired," Emma prompts. 

"Yes," Cas agrees, then does the fakest yawn Dean's ever witnesses. Dean beams at him. 

It takes a long time to go over everything and explain the content of the backpack, and he feels kind of weird handing it over, and by the time they’re headed out the door Emma has been wearing a hole in the carpet and muttering about the park for ages. At least she'll probably sleep well tonight. 

"Is an hour and a half enough?" 

"Clearly, you've never had nap time with Cas," Dean says, making a point to leer at him for the sole purpose of making Sam uncomfortable. 

"Make it two hours, Sam." Cas says, eyes fixed on Dean, burning through his skin. 

"Uh, okay," Sam says, whilst Jess laughs at his expression. 

“Call if you need anything.” 

"Please watch out for Claire's socks." Cas adds, which is kind of weird given the last words that came out of his mouth, but then Dean’s become growingly accustomed to that kind of thing in the past two and a bit years of being honest to God parents. 

He pretty much has Cas' whole weight tacking him to the sofa the second the front door closes, and it's about another thirty seconds until he has Cas lips pressing into that spot on his neck. 

“I’m guessing you got the memo about nap time." 

"Please take off your clothes." 

"Bedroom," Dean says, dragging them both up, getting caught up in kissing him before they make it very far. "Sam's house, Cas, even he probably hasn't had sex this close to the kitchen." 

"I love you," Cas says, dragging him towards the spare bedroom by his t-shirt collar, as if he needed any persuasion. Then Dean's knees back against the bed, sat down with Cas kneeling over him before he really has a chance to think. “And you look glorious in the heat." 

"I look like I'm sweating and exhausted and like I'm getting old." 

"If you're not going to add anything to the conversation, don't speak," Cas says, and then his touch is ghosting over his crotch, just barely there sensation through his jeans and his boxers. 

"You're kinda..." 

"Bossy?" 

"Was gonna go with horny," Dean says, “but bossy works." 

"How many erections can we achieve in two hours?" 

"Surprise me," Dean says, and then Cas has titled him back onto the bed and is headed for dick. 

The answer is apparently, not as many as they used to, but still a pretty decent number. 

* 

“Do you think about it?” Dean asks, when he has newly-tanned husband curled up on his chest for the remainder of ‘nap time’, because they’ve almost been caught going at it by Sam before and it wasn’t particularly fun the first time. “When we nearly broke up,” 

“Yes,” Cas says, “Usually when I’m reminding myself why our relationship is precious,” 

“Precious,” Dean repeats, swallowing. “Yeah, that word works.” 

* 

Gabriel is the one who got them the tickets for Disney (apparently he knows people, which is in itself wholly disturbing), but Sam's the one who insisted they go. Jess is apparently a fan. Then again, it's not like Cas only started watched Disney movies when they adopted Emma. The long and short of it is, no one listened when he argued that Emma was four, for God's sake, and Claire was seven months old, and neither of them were gonna remember this, so now they’re making the drive from Palo Alto to frigging Disneyland with two kids under five. 

It's not his thing. It's not even in the realm of things that are his things, but that realm now includes reading child development books, the bigger version of lego, watching Dora the Explorer on TV and babbling at his seven month year old, so he's having to adapt. 

Claire is being particularly social today, which is usually awesome, except today they have a seven hour drive to get to Disney, and she's not enjoying being cooped up in her car seat. Emma is responding to her distress by playing up and being loud (not least because she didn't twig that driving to Disney would take more than ten minutes), it’s hot as hell, he hates rentals and Sam was being all smug about Dean having to get a douchey car (his only option was a god damn people carrier; he'd refused to speak to Cas for half an hour after he found out, even though he's not entirely how it can possibly have been Cas' fault) in order to fit Claire's stroller. 

"Emma," Cas says, "Do not get pen on these seats," 

"I'm colouring," 

"I know, Emma, but if you just put the lid on when you're not using the colour -”

"Dad, shush." 

"Emma, we don't tell people to shush, it's rude," Dean says from the wheel, turning up the air con, even though it’s virtually ineffective. "Cas, can't you put her back on the crayons?" 

"No, pens. Big girl pens." 

"But, if you get pen on the seats Daddy's gotta pay extra, Princess." 

"Don't care," 

"And then we won't have any money to buy you a present from Disney tomorrow." Cas says, because apparently the heat and the long car journey as getting to him too. Cas usually tells him off for that kind of parenting move and now he's deliberately not catching his eye. 

"I think crayons are more artistic, anyway." Dean says, even though he's pretty sure no four year old in the history of the world has managed to make something remotely artistic, and Emma's worse than most because she spent over the first year of her life in a really shitty, neglectful and damn near abusive situation with her birth mom's freaky deaky women's cult, and then spent another few months in care when people were trying but no one was loving her right, till Missouri figured the girl who severely mistrusts women might do okay with a couple of guys who really really wanted a kid and had been on the list for a while. 

"I don't," Emma huffs, and then Dean hears what sounds like a lot of pens being chucked onto the floor. 

Cas sighs. Dean wipes some more drool of Claire's chin with his spare hand and puts the fucking Disney CD on. They get half way through the second song before Emma declares that she's bored. 

"Cas, call Sam and ask him where the nearest beach is. We're gonna need a break." As it turns out, there's one which is out the way but not enough for Dean to care right now, and won't take that long to get to. They have swimming stuff in the trunk anyway. Anything will be better than another hour of this. 

Dean’s joined in singing along to A Whole New World by the time they have a concrete plan about the beach. Emma covers her ears and tells him he's no good, but Claire actually starts laughing. Cas is smiling in the back seat and maybe this whole long journey thing isn’t that bad, really. 

* 

Claire is bum shuffling across the blanket toward Cas, smiling her head off, and Dean is absolutely transfixed. She's babbling, smiling, fingers reaching out for Cas' sunglasses. She misses and gets his face instead. 

"Dean, aren't you supposed to be watching her?" Cas asks, cracking one eye open to smile at Claire. He's laid across the picnic blanket that Sam and Jess thought to bring, shirt off, shitty sandals next to him in the stand. 

"Am watching her," Dean says, "Watching her trying to take your sunglasses," Dean says, reaching forward to pluck them off himself. Claire laughs, clear and loud, and that’s a pretty new development. “Is that funny, Claire-Bear? Huh?” Claire laughs and make another grab for them. “You wanna wear your Dad’s sunglasses? Here,” Dean says, and holds them up in front of her face, so that she can see through them. 

“Wait, hold that,” Jess says, digging her camera out of her shorts to take a picture of the three of them, Emma clutching hold of her other hand. 

“You wanna get in the photo, Emma?” Sam asks, “A real Winchester-Novak family portrait.” 

Emma nearly knees him in the crotch in her eagerness to get in the photo, clambering over his legs to sit behind Claire. 

“Hey, watch the merchandise, Emma,” Dean says, “Your Dad would miss –” 

“– is that appropriate?” Cas interjects. 

“You said you wanted to talk about the birds and the bees young,” Dean shrugs, turning to offer him a grin. Emma takes the sunglasses and puts them back on Cas’ face, as Jess’ camera clicks again. She only managed to get them over one ear, though, so they’re completely wonky. “Even your sunglasses aren’t straight,” 

“Whoever told you you were funny was lying,” Cas says. Another click. 

“Daddy, look at the camera,” 

“Sorry, Emma,” Dean says, pulling his gaze away from Cas to look at Jess. They don’t have that many photos, actually. Not one’s that aren’t candid snaps on iPhones, or whatever. Not many proper photos. 

Still, they have a lot of time to add to their collection. 

* 

“What’s the betting the baby changing facilities are in the ladies?” Dean asks, eyeing Claire wearily. 

“They might be in the disabled.” 

“They even have disabled toilets on a beach?” 

“It’s a legal requirement,” Cas says. 

“Who are you supposed to complain to on a beach?” Dean asks, frowning in the direction of the toilets. 

“I’ll take her,” Jess says, beaming at them like a ray of frigging sunshine, and then she scoops Claire up into her arms and starts scanning for the public toilets. Sam took Emma off on a mission to find ice cream a few minutes previously and then, suddenly, they’re alone. 

“I think you need more sun cream on, Dean,” 

“You mean you wanna get your hands on this?” Dean asks, nodding to his bare torso. 

“I am very concerned about your welfare,” Cas says, reaching for the sun cream. 

“You get the impression Sam and Jess keep stealing our kids?” Dean asks, as Cas proceeds to start smoothing him in more sun cream than could ever be needed. Ever. “I mean, the peace and quiet is kinda nice and all,” 

“I think they’re practicing,” 

“Shit, really?” Dean asks, relaxing into Cas’ touch, “That’s… huh, big.” 

“They’ve been together for three years.” 

“Amateurs,” 

“We can’t all meet our future husbands in the first week of college,” 

“Cas, I really don’t think my nipples are gonna burn,” Dean says, “And I probably could have got them myself.” 

“I’m being thorough,” Cas says, following the line of his collar bone with his thumb. 

“You got laid yesterday,” Dean says, “That’s like, twice this month. You’re already being spoilt.” 

“Have you taken your anti-depressants today?” 

“I’m good,” 

“Dean,” Cas frowns, “They’re a preventative measure as well as a cure. You were beginning to feel low, so you started taking them again.” 

“Yeah, but, now I’m on the beach with my sexy husband, my awesome daughters, my brother and his kick ass girlfriend.” 

“It doesn’t work like that,” Cas says, “And you’ll beat yourself up about it if you feel bad whilst we’re on vacation.” 

“Fine,” Dean says, “They’re in the backpack,” 

Cas smears a line of sun cream over his left cheek and then leans forward to kiss him. 

“Did you speak to Sam?” 

“Yeah, won’t have been enough, probably, but…” He trails off as he gets thrown into shadow by his giant of a little brother, twisting to meet his daughter’s eye. 

“We only gots four ice creams coz we couldn’t carry anymore,” Emma says, eyes wide and serious. She’s got one hand reaching comically high above her head in order to hold Sam’s hand and the other clutching her ice cream and she’s looking a little bit like not getting enough ice cream is the end of the world. 

“Don’t worry, Emma,” Cas says, voice deep and solid enough that it’s probably enough for Emma to actually stop worrying. “Daddy and I will share an ice cream,” 

“Please quit calling me Daddy, Padre,” Dean says. “It’s disturbing.” 

“And Padre isn't?” 

“Why did you get Dad and I got Daddy anyway?” Dean grumbles, “You’re clearly the pushover out of the two of us.” 

Sam gets a good laugh out of that, even though he's regarding him with some kind of suspicious stare, like just because this one time they nearly sunk their relationship Dean’s got to be putting on some of this happiness, which he's not. Their life isn't perfect or anything, but it's close to. 

* 

Gabriel immediately swoops Emma up into a hug, supplies her with sweets and gets her so goddamn hyper than they’re possibly never going to sleep. Given they’ve gotten a family room with an extra crib and they told Emma they were going to Disney in the morning, the chances of good night’s sleep were minimal at best anyway, but still. Dean’s back hurts from driving so long (and when did he get so frigging old, anyway?) and, as much as the beach was a welcome respite, it didn’t make the latter leg of the journey any less wearisome. Even if Emma was asleep for most of it. 

“You wake Claire up and I will end you,” Dean mutters by way of greeting Gabriel, before seeking out the queue to check in. Gabriel also got them a discount at one of the Disney hotels, which isn’t exactly helping his mood, because there’s _no escaping_ any of it. 

“Missed you too, Deano,” Gabriel says, “When do I get to finally meet my brand spanking new niece?” 

“Hello, Gabriel. You remember Jess.” 

“How could I forget?” Gabriel says, and mock curtseys. “Let’s get this show on the road.” 

“Awesome,” Dean says, pushing Claire’s stroller and the backpack in Castiel’s direction, because there’s very little chance that Emma’s going to patiently wait in a queue and there’s no point dragging them all through the pain. 

“Your Rugrats house trained, Deano?” 

“Uh,” Dean says, glancing at where Emma’s spinning round in tight circles. “They’re kids.” 

“Restaurant ready?” 

“You’re the most likely to start a food fight,” 

“So I can book us a posh meal with the Princesses?” 

“When did this become my life?” Dean asks, turning to Sam for support and receiving nothing but a smirk. Over by the stroller, Castiel is bent to Emma height looking serious yet utterly ridiculous with her goddamn tiara balancing precariously on top of his head. 

* 

They wind up getting dinner at the hotel restaurant because Dean strongly objects to the idea of anything that isn’t a beer and an early night and, apparently, there’s a chance that frigging Mickey Mouse might be wondering around at any given moment. 

In the end, Mickey doesn’t show, but there’s decent accommodation for babies and a fair enough kids menu (even if not many of the options seem to include any kind of vegetable, which is the kind of thing that has Cas frowning down his nose), so it works out okay. Sam orders a salad and Dean rips into him for it, even if Cas’ current mission is to improve Dean’s diet. He doesn’t make any comment about it in front of his brother at least. 

Claire keeps trying to turn cannibal on her own hand and Gabriel seems to have instantaneously fallen in love with her. The weird thing, given Claire’s general trust issues when it comes to people (maybe she got a better start to life than Emma, but it was still shitty enough for her to be pulled out of it at a few months old), is that she falls in love right back. 

“Claire-bear, you hungry you can have some more food ‘stead of eating your fist,” Dean comments, as Emma continues to pick at her fries. She babbles at him in response. 

“Yeah, fair enough, I don’t like the look of it either. Baby food is gross.” 

“Dean,” 

“Cas,” 

“Daddy,” 

“What’s up, Princess?” Dean asks, turning towards Emma. 

“Desert?” 

“No,” 

“Why?” 

“Emma, you didn’t finish your dinner,” Castiel says, fixing her with his trademark frowny face, which usually does the trick. Emma frowns at her half full plate but doesn’t make any further comments. Dean figures it’s actually kind of unfair considering that the kids menu is supposed to for kids up to the age of twelve and, clearly, Emma was never gonna finish it. Still, Dean doesn’t much want to hang around for the length of desert. She won’t be able to finish that either. 

“Still can’t get over you two clowns as parents,” Gabriel says, as Claire makes a grab for his hand. “And you still act like a couple of newlyweds. Disgusting.” 

“Back off my happiness, Gabe,” 

“Does Gabriel know about…?” Sam begins, then trails off. 

“Probably,” Gabriel says. 

“No,” Castiel cuts in, which of course results in a raised eye from Gabriel. 

“I’m offended, bro. You been keeping secrets?” 

“It was over a decade ago, Sam, I thought we were passed this,” Dean hisses, trying to catch the eye of the waiter to pay the bill, head up to their rooms and hopefully try and get everyone to sleep. At this rate he’d put his money on Gabriel being the biggest pain in the ass about bed time. 

“I’m intrigued.” 

“I c-h-e-a-t-e-d,” Cas says, looking like he would prefer to be having this conversation _never_ which, in actual fact, should be the next time that they have this conversation. Dean’s at least secure in the knowledge that he made the right decision in not letting it become public knowledge at the time, because Jesus _fuck_ he would not have been able to deal with everyone’s reaction. 

“You...” Gabriel says, as he mentally spells it out, “Holy fu…furniture.” 

“Do we have to keep talking about this?” Dean asks, because Castiel looks even more uncomfortable than he did when it was bought up in front of Sam. “Shockingly, it’s not actually my favourite topic of conversation.” Claire babbles at him. “What d’you gotta do to get the check round here?” 

“If you want to put Claire down we can –” 

“- no,” Dean interrupts. Sam is not picking up the check. Not happening. 

“For real?” Gabriel asks, eyebrows hitting the ceiling. “You? Castiel?” 

“I can get the check,” Castiel says, his gaze forcefully level. “If you want to head to the room.” 

“You think Emma’s gonna go to bed willingly?” 

“No bed, Daddy, no, no,” Emma says, looking up from her plate and shaking her head vigorously. Dean makes a _you see_ gesture to illustrate his point, which has Cas frowning deliberately. Obviously, he wants to talk to Gabriel about this either without their kids, his brother-in-law, or everyone including Dean around, but the problem with having kids is that you don’t always get to do shit you want anymore. Not that he’d change it for the whole damn world, but the point remains. 

“Well, Emma could watch a movie with us,” Jess suggests, “The hotel TV has a large supply of Disney.”

“Awesome,” Dean says, “You good, Cas?” 

“I’m fine, Dean,” Cas says, in the tone of voice that would probably have really pissed him off before the whole kids thing, but now just washes over him. Bigger fish to fry and all that. 

“I’m joining movie night later,” Gabriel says, “Gotta get some quality time with my niece,” 

The chances of them getting Emma to sleep _ever_ are diminishing by the second. 

* 

Claire's exhausted from all the socialising and the excitement that is apparently Gabriel, so she settles much quicker than expected. By the time Cas is back in their room Dean’s showered, unpacked their overnight crap and Emma’s pyjamas, teddy and toothbrush. He's just leaving their shit in the suitcase, but Emma can be particular about things. She's more lax about the need to stick to a routine right now cause she's distracted by Disney, but if she's tired later there's no point testing her adaptability. She’s not usually this excitable. She’s a serious kind of kid, really, so the fact that she’s acting like a regular four year old because of _Disney_ is probably worth the flights, the drive, the use of pretty much all of their combined annual holiday and the amount this has cost them. 

"Hello, Dean," Cas says, wondering back into the hotel room and watching Dean flip between dresses and skirts in an attempt to find more pairs of Claire's socks. It’s like finding goddamn gold dust. 

“Hey,” Dean says, glancing up as Cas crosses the room to sit a little too close on the edge of the double and watch him. He smells vaguely of expensive whiskey, which isn’t entirely surprising. Dean figured they probably hung around for another drink and a catch up. As much as he forgets sometimes, Gabriel is Cas’ brother. “I’m betting Gabe picked up the check,” 

“He insisted,” 

“I bet he did,” Dean throws back, rolling his eyes. Everyone’s been throwing themselves under the bus trying to pay for everything since they adopted Emma and its damned annoying. They knew how expensive kids were (well, they didn’t, because no one can predict that shit, but they did know they _were_ expensive) and had saved accordingly. The charity is unnecessary. 

“He also reminded me how expensive college is,” 

“They’re not in school yet,” Dean says, “Hell, Emma might not be for another year. We’ve got some time to save.” 

“Gabriel thinks Claire is destined to be a Doctor.” 

“She would be a kick ass Doctor,” 

“Dean, she is not currently able to speak,” 

“Don’t rain over her dreams, Cas,” Dean says, which has the corner of Cas’ lips tilting upwards and then shortly after has Cas pulling him into a kiss. “You taste like Christmas at Bobby’s,” Dean says, letting Cas drag him up from suitcase height to bed height and in for another kiss, “So, does Gabe buying you Disney’s finest mean you’re good?” 

“Yes, we’re… good,” Cas says, “He was surprised. I think he underestimates my ability to fuck things up.” 

“I haven’t heard you swear for frigging months. It does things to me.” Dean says, running a hand over his shoulders, “And do things look fucked up to you?” 

“Not currently,” Cas concedes. 

“Cas, we got this. We’re good for life. Hit the goddamn jackpot,” Dean says, “Hell, we’re macking on a bed in a Disney Hotel, in between a bunk bed and a cot, and I’m pretty sure Gabe lied to us about the price of this place. You think our eighteen year old selves could have predicted life would be like this?” 

“I’m not entirely sure eighteen year old you would have been very impressed by this hotel room,” 

“Yeah, but, he’d be damn impressed I tapped this. A lot.” 

“Would that have been sufficient for him?” 

“Dude, yes,” Dean says, “We’re living the dream, sweetheart. Now quit worrying before you pull or muscle or something.” 

“Alright,” 

“Claire’s asleep, thanks for asking.” 

“I’m aware, Dean,” Castiel says, back to exasperated, “We haven’t had date night for a while.” 

“You manage to talk Benny or Alfie into babysitting again, I’m all ears.” 

“Garth might volunteer,” 

“Yeah he probably would,” Dean says. Emma is about as bemused by Garth as he is, although Claire would probably get a kick out of it. “Honestly, Cas, I don’t think Claire’s ready to be left in the hands of some stranger. Sam and Jess are one thing, but…” 

“I agree,” Cas says, “I just… I worry,” 

“About us? Pretty sure this is just the flipside of the parenting deal.” 

“I know,” Cas says, expression still drawn tight, “I should shower.” 

“Want company?” 

“Whilst I do, I think it would be unadvisable,” Cas says and kisses him again, “And you’ve already showered.” 

“Bad planning on my behalf,” 

“I’ll be quick,” 

“You say that a lot and it’s never true,” Dean says, moving back to allow Cas to stand up and disappear into the bathroom, even though it’s against his better judgement. 

When he returns he smells like Disney soap. 

* 

Cas is resting on his chest, half curled around him, when there’s a knock at the door. Dean’s been distractedly running his fingers through Cas’ bedhead and listening to Cas talk about politics turned philosophy turned the random jumbled up crap that exists in Cas’ head. They don’t always get the chance to do this sort of stuff anymore. Not that Cas _needs_ to worry, but it is nice to catch a few minutes for just them. 

Dean is about to detangle himself and get up when the door swings open, to reveal Gabriel. 

“You gave Gabe a key card?” Dean asks, pushing Cas off his chest to stand up. He doesn’t need Gabe privy to the fact that, given about an hour to themselves whilst Emma watched Disney cartoons and Claire slept, they opted for cuddling and talking. He has a reputation to upkeep. 

“In case there was an emergency with Emma,” Cas says, then he’s up, and staring down his brother, “Gabriel, is there a problem?” 

“She’s crying up a storm,” Gabriel says, “And she wants Daddy.” 

“Dude, what did you do to my kid?” Dean asks, reaching for a shirt, because he never bothered putting one on after his shower and he doesn’t fancy wondering through a Disney hotel half naked. Especially given Cas gave him a couple of hickey’s yesterday. 

“We were watching Lilo and Stich,” Gabe says, as if that explains everything, which it goddamn doesn’t. He’s pretty sure Cas has made him sit through it before, but he doesn’t really remember it from the blurred mess of Disney movies. It might be the one with the surfing, but he doesn’t know. 

“That don’t mean jack to me,” 

“This girl adopts a dog, who’s actually an alien, and … Short story, from what we could work out she’s crying because she thinks she’s the alien cause neither of you pushed her out of your –” 

“ – fuck, all right,” Dean says, “Cas, you good to hold the fort?” 

“So you’re daddy?” 

“Gabe, shut up,” Dean says, picking up Emma’s teddy for good measure before heading out. He can hear Emma wailing from half a corridor down and he just really frigging hopes that none of their neighbours have babies that are gonna wake up, because Dean can only imagine how pissed those parents are gonna be. God help all the exhausted parents at Disneyland. 

He gets there to find her on the centre of their double bed red faced, hugging her knees and sobbing. She’s beyond the coherency stage now. It’s happened before. Emma’s a troubled kid with a shitty start and that kind of thing leaves it mark on people. She’s hella deep for a four year old. Thinks too much. It hasn’t happened for a while though. 

Sam and Jess very much look like two people who’ve tried very hard and just realised how out of control the situation is. 

“Hey Princess,” Dean says, trying to get as much to her level as he can when there’s a bed in the way, within arm’s length but no closer. “Emma, Uncle Gabe says you wanted me.” More sobs. More shaking. “Emma, you think you could look at me a sec?” Nothing. “I’ve got Patch.” That gets her looking up, then she reaches out her hand. The movement from hugging knees to hugging the teddy is done as quickly as possible, which means she has less energy left to sob. Dean waits her out for a few minutes, then she scrabbles forward on the bed and wraps her arms around his neck. 

“Daddy,” 

“I’ve got you,” Dean says, “And so’s Patch.” Emma cries for a few more minutes on his shoulder, then the tears start to slow. “You wanna tell me what’s up, Princess?” He gets the words ‘Stitch’, ‘family’, ‘adopted’ and ‘social worker’ and ‘grown up pens’ but her lip’s wobbling too much to make out the rest of it. “Emma, pumpkin, you missed the best bit of the movie. Point is that Lilo’s family is special ‘cause they choose each other.” 

“But I got pen in the big car and you said you didn’t want me to,” Emma says, looking up at him now, face still red and teary. He’s not exactly _surprised_ that it looks like he’s gonna be spending the last day of the holiday scrubbing pen off the rental’s seats, but he’s pretty Cas must have already seen and kept mom about it. Probably figured Dean’d be pissed. Not that any of its worth his daughter having a breakdown over, anyway. 

"Can I tell you a secret, Emma?" Dean says, running his fingers through her knotted hair. It needs a proper brush, actually, because god knows how such fine strands of hair can get so knotty. "Your Dad shaved off his peach fuzz even though I said I didn't want him to," Dean says, tracing a fake beard on Emma's face with his thumb and index finger. "Couple weeks back he made me eat a Tuna salad, even though I didn't want him too. And then me.... well, I bought a new sofa even though your dad didn't want me to. Once I even quit my job when your Dad didn't want me to. But we've made promises to each other, yeah? To be a family. That's why marriage is special, cause you pick someone and you say I want you forever. Except for us, we did that for you too. So we made you a promise, and it's all there in a contract with our signature somewhere in the study back home, to love and cherish you, even if you get pen on the seats." 

"Oh," 

"So when Lilo adopts whatshisface..." 

"Stitch, Daddy," Emma prompts. 

"Yeah, Stitch. She's makes him a promise that they're family now. Don't matter where he came from or what species is, cause family means -" 

"-no one gets left behind." 

"Yeah," Dean says, "And then few months ago we made those same promises to Claire. To love and care for her. And that's what makes her your sister. You love Claire right?" 

"Sometimes I don't like when she cries," 

"You and me both, pumpkin, but that's cause she ain't got this whole language thing worked out yet. Just her way of telling us somethings up." 

"I wanna promise you," 

"Promise me what, Emma?" 

"To love you forever," Emma says, "And Claire and Dad." 

"We already know, pumpkin," Dean says, "Just like you should. But, tell you what, if you want we can head back to our room and you can tell Dad your promise and we can watch the rest of Lilo and Stitch with the subtitles cause Claire's asleep, but only if you promise to go to sleep as soon as the movies finished. How's that for a deal?" 

"Shake," Emma says, grabbing his hand and shaking it up and down. "Shake, Daddy." 

"I'm shaking I'm shaking," Dean says, "You gonna say goodnight to everyone and thank Uncle Sam and Auntie Jess for letting them watch Lilo and stitch in your room?" 

"Night Sam, Jess, Gabe,” Emma says, shyer now she's remembered they're all here and not just Dean. "Thankyouuu," 

"Good job, Princess." 

"Daddy carry," 

"All right," Dean says, "But tomorrow you gotta walk everywhere yourself, angel." 

Emma wraps her tiny arms around his neck and fuck if Dean isn't getting too old for this. Or maybe Emma's the one getting too old. Either way, he needs to stop acting as a mode of transport for his four year old after spending a whole day driving an unfamiliar car. He hurts. 

"That was..." Sam says, blinking at him. 

"There some kind of off switch?" Gabe half whispers, "That's gotta be some kind of magic." 

"I'm beat," Dean says, "And some of us are gonna be woken up at the crack of dawn." 

"Some of us?" Jess asks, smiling, "Sam’s set an alarm for half six." 

"I'm not gonna sleep a wink." Gabriel grins, “Viva la Disney.” 

"All right, kids, bedtime," Dean says, daring any of them to make any further comment about his fatherhood routine. He’s never had to do the meltdown-prevention routine in front of anyone but Cas, Benny and Missouri before. Cas doesn’t really count given he’s a dab-hand and Missouri is Emma’s social worker, so it was actually a good opportunity to prove that they could hack her high care needs. Benny, well, he knows a different side of Dean than Sam does, so he wasn’t especially taken aback. Dean’s not entirely sure what Sam’s going to make of the whole thing. “All of you.” 

He needn't have worried about Emma keeping him promise about bedtime; she’s asleep by the time he's carried her back to their hotel room. Castiel manages to get her into her pjs and run a brush through her hair whilst she’s sat on his lap, just barely conscious, and muttering about how she promises to love him forever. Cas, always good at taking Emma's seriousness in his stride, looked her straight in the eye and said that he was going to hold her to that, and that he'd made a promise to do the same a long time ago. In the end she passed out on his stomach and the three of them slept in the double because they were both loathe to move her, partially because they wanted to avoid another meltdown and partially because, well, it’s not so bad having Emma’s tiny form wedged between the pair them. 

Claire only woke up twice. 

Dean considers it to be an almost-success all round. 

* 

Of course, Sam isn’t done talking about it yet. They’ve been in Disney for five days in which Sam keeps sending him pitiful looks like he suddenly feels like Dean got a raw end of the deal in life, which is partially true given he’s spent most of their holiday with a pair of frigging adult Minnie Mouse ears shoved on his head because both Emma and Claire seem to think it’s utterly hilarious. Given they’re both at completely different life stages and currently have nothing in common, it’s probably about the first time they’ve ever agreed on something. So it’d have been pretty cold and crappy of him to refuse to wear the damn things, even if Cas assured him that most of the reason it was funny was because of how irritated he looked. There were _photos_ of it, for fuck’s sake. Cas got to be frigging Eeyore, who’d always been bad ass, whilst Dean was stuck with simpering, giggling Minnie mouse. Whatever. At least the primary thing Emma asked for was a light sabre; even if he looked like a total ass, his kid looked cool. 

So, yeah, his life does officially suck, just not for the reasons Sam’s thinking about. 

“Gonna take Sammy here for a beer,” Dean says, after they’ve eaten at another of Disneyland’s fine variety of restaurants, which is the usual cue for either he or Cas (or both) to put Claire to bed whilst Emma watches a movie with Sam, Jess and Gabriel. “If you’re good to close up?” 

Cas rolls his eyes at his phrasing, but Dean knows that Cas has noticed those little glances, too, and they’ve probably just been serving to remind him about that whole crappy point in their lives. It’s unnecessary. It needs nipping in the bud. He’s not exactly protesting at Dean finally sorting it out. 

“Out with it,” Dean says, the second they’ve both ordered and Sam is sending him one of _those_ looks. 

“I just, I don’t understand.” 

“Who’s saying you need to?” 

“Don’t get me wrong, Dean,” Sam says, swallowing, “I am _thrilled_ you and Cas worked it out. I am. I just… I don’t understand how that even happened. Cas cheating… that’s _big_.” Dean’s still not entirely sure how any of this matters, anyway, and is about to tell Sam to stick his nose out completely when he carries on talking. “I never saw Mom and Dad’s relationship, Dean, and Bobby and Ellen happened way after you and Cas. Just, I base pretty much everything I know about relationships on you guys.”

“That’s cute, Sammy,” 

“I’m serious, Dean,” Sam says, “I mean, yeah, it’s none of my business but I just…” 

“Alright,” Dean swallows, “You’ve convinced me. There were a lot of reasons why we nearly tanked, okay? It wasn’t Cas’ fault. I, well, I took off with Dad for like three months, first. We were right out of college thinking we were set for our whole lives. We were serious about each other, Sam, right from the off. But I don’t think we realised what that even meant… so we took advantage of being in a relationship. I… well, there were a lot of reasons why I took off with Dad, lot of which weren’t anything to do with Cas, but he was busy and had stuff going on and I was needy and insecure enough not to be able to handle it,” Dean says, taking another sip of his beer. “Then, I was gone. Cas got to the point where he figured I wasn’t coming back, that I didn’t care, so he went to a bar. It certainly wasn’t because he was bored. I wasn’t _there_ to be bored of.” 

“So… it was just a one night stand,” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, “He told me about it straight away when I finally showed back up home. Honestly, Sam, this point I’m not sure I’d ever undo any of it. We hurt each other pretty bad I mean, it was _bad, Sammy_ , but I reckon we learnt a hell of a lot more than we lost. About how relationships work, about what we can and cannot handle, about needing other people. All of it. Dunno how else we’d have got the memo.” 

“When even was this?” 

“Uh… remember in your first year at Stanford? Right before me and Cas moved into that apartment. I stopped answering my cell. The origins of date night.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Sam says, narrowing his eyes slightly, “I _knew_ you were being weird. Bobby told me I was overthinking.” 

“Bless Bobby Singer,” Dean says. 

“He knew?” 

“Well, he uh, more or less staged an intervention. And he’s still on Team Cas, so…” 

“You ever talk about it?” 

“Not really,” Dean says, taking another sip of his beer, “It doesn’t come up in conversation all that often. I mean I’m sorry we didn’t tell you at the time, but by the time we were in an okay place to talk about all of it we didn’t wanna go over it all again. It was just done. Now are you gonna quit looking at me like I’m some tortured soul? I’m happy. We’re happy. We’re in frigging Disneyland. Are we done?” 

“Yeah, we’re done,” Sam says, sitting back in his chair looking a little more comfortable. He’s smiling again. Well, more like _smirking_ actually, as he glances down at his beer before turning the smirk back in Dean’s direction “Good talk, Minnie.” 

God damn. 

* 

Claire woke up five times last night, which probably would have been fine if each of those times hadn’t waken Emma up too. The excitement of Disneyland has muted to the point where she’s back to being fairly solemn about everything (she’s actually kind of like Dean imagines Cas as a kid, which he’s aware makes little sense, but that’s still how he thinks about it) so was _not_ okay with being woken up so regularly and has since been stressing about the damn schedule. She likes things pre-planned and structured and apparently the fact that Dean doesn’t know which frigging ride they’re going on first is _not acceptable_. She didn’t take to his suggestion that she could pick, either. 

“Dean, your negative vibes are not helping,” Cas says, after Dean’s just barely not lost his temper and showered, whilst Cas’s trying to coax Emma into looking at the map so they can formulate the grand plan. He’s not actually _angry_ he’s just frustrated and tried and he doesn’t want to spend another day getting molested by adults dressed as cartoon characters, especially if neither Emma or Claire are in the mood either. He’s there _for them_ and if they’re too tried to appreciate it, the whole thing is an exercise in wasting time. 

“You need to quit believing every damn thing those books tell you,” Dean shoots back, repacking the backpack with a day’s worth of formula, the last pair of Claire’s socks and another damn colouring book. “They’re aimed at gullible yummy Mummy’s with too much time and too much money.” 

“Emma and Claire can pick up on your tone, Dean.” 

“I can pick up on your passive aggressive bullcrap, too.” 

“Crap is still a swear word.” 

“Give me a break, Cas,” Dean hisses, because they’re experts in whispered arguments at this point. “Sun block, Emma.” 

“No, Daddy, is yucky.” 

“Tough luck, Princess,” Dean says, which gets him a scowl from Cas and Emma. By the time Sam knocks on the door to tell them they were supposed to be meeting downstairs for breakfast ten minutes ago, they’re on the brink of breaking their no-yelling rule and have been half-whispering insults at each other for the past twenty minutes. Emma is smothered in enough Sun block that she’s probably good for a few hours, but she’s also looks like she’s on the edge of a total meltdown. Negative vibe central. 

“Bad night,” Dean says, as Sam raises an eyebrow at the four of them. It’s then that Claire starts crying all over again. They’d had about a five minutes break since the last bout of crying and it’s getting on every single one of his nerves. “Cas can you _do something_?” 

“We’ve tried everything, Dean.” 

“Daddy, breakfast Uncle Sam,” Emma says, frowning in Claire’s direction. “Claire loud.” 

“Perfect,” Dean says, “You go eat, Emma, we’ll be with you in… uh, under fifteen minutes, okay? You good, Sam?” Dean asks, then pretty much pushes her on him before he has a chance to object. He’ll feel bad about it later, but now he’s tense, exhausted and thirty seconds away from joining Claire at wailing at the damn ceiling. “Fifteen minutes. Get us some coffee.” 

“Dean, you need to stop projecting irritation.” Cas says, when the door’s shut. He’s now got Claire scooped up in his arms, trying to rock her into silence, but she’s not letting up. She’s got some frigging lungs, that girl. 

“So now it’s my damn fault?” He demands, and his raising his voice just makes her cry louder. “Does she need changing?” 

“This is not the first time our daughter has been upset, Dean. No, she does not need changing.” 

“I’m just asking, Cas, there’s no need to bite my damn head off.” 

“I know what I’m doing,” 

“Not saying you _don’t_.” 

“You take her, if you’re such an expert.” 

“Cas, for…” He has Claire pushed into his hands before he has a chance to finish his sentence, whilst Cas angrily repacks the backpack. Dean’s already done it, but if it’s making the guy feel better he’s not about to stop him. 

“Just because you were able to go part time does not mean I don’t understand our daughter’s needs.” 

“Now who’s projecting fucking negativity?” 

“Dean,” Cas rage-whispers, glaring at him, “ _Why_ are you trying to start an argument?” 

“I’m _not_ ,” Dean hisses back, as Claire wails at the pair of them, “You’re the one getting at me, dude, so just quit the self-righteous act. I’m not doing anything wrong.” 

“I am _tried_.” 

“Guess what, buddy, so am I. Welcome to parenthood." 

“Why are we arguing?” 

“We like arguing,” Dean shrugs, sitting down on the bed and shifting his hold on Claire. “We never get to argue anymore. We have ten minutes till we’re late and Emma starts freaking, by the way.” 

“She _won’t stop_ crying.” 

“I know, Cas, I got eardrums too,” Dean says, “What’s up, Claire-bear, huh? You fed up of Mickey Mouse too? Wanna head back to Uncle Sam’s, stop hanging out with freaky oversized animals?” 

“Dean, we have _one more_ day,” Cas says, finally leaving the backpack alone and sitting down next to him, reaching out to run a thumb over Claire’s balled fist. “It wouldn’t kill you to admit that you’re enjoying yourself.” 

“What’s not to love? Princesses, rides, frigging parades.” 

“Dean,” Cas says, “You’re here with your daughters, the brother you rarely see, his girlfriend and your brother-in-law, who suggested this tip in the first place. We are on our first holiday as a complete family.” 

“You’re here too,” Dean says, glancing up at him. He’s still got Claire _wailing_ and squirming in his arms, but it’s still nice to get to just look at Cas. He looks about as exhausted as Dean feels. He hasn’t shaved. He probably won’t bother, either. 

“I am,” Cas says, “Admit it, Dean, you are enjoying Disney.” 

“I... fine,” Dean concedes, “It could be worse.” Cas manages a smile, which is enough to inspire him to lean forward and kiss the guy, because they may be exhausted and irritable, but that’s all part of the package. "Don't worry about us, Cas," Dean adds, thinking back to their conversation from a few days ago. "We're golden, okay? With or without date night." 

"I know," Cas says, tension leaking from his shoulders, his smile increasing. "We've come a long way." 

"I'll say," Dean says, leaning forward to kiss him again. 

Claire actually _stops crying_ , too, the noise just petering out with a gurgle and one final sob, then she’s just quiet. She might actually be about to fall asleep. 

There’s a chance Cas is right about the negative vibes stuff. 

* 

It’s their last day, so Emma’s got them all posing for a photo in front of the damn Castle, practically demanded it in fact, with, Cas in his Eeyore ears with Claire in his arms and Dean in his Minnie ears with Emma perched on his hip, light sabre aloft. 

Sam’s holding the backpack whilst Jess tries to take the actual photo. Gabriel’s in charge of getting both Emma and Claire smiling at the same time and is doing so by wearing some kind of Princess wig and yelling ‘Daddy wears panties’ (and Dean really needs to have a chat with Cas about how Gabriel got that intel at some point) at the top of his voice. Dean has to concede its effective, even if he’s pretty sure the way he started flushing when Gabriel first start yelling has given a little too much away about their sex life to Jess and Sam (and the large number of witnesses). 

“Now kiss Daddy,” Emma declares, leaning forwards to press her lips against the rough of his cheek. 

“Excellent idea, Emma,” Cas says, then he has Cas kissing his other goddamn cheek, Claire wedged between them smacking her lips so she’s not left out. 

“That’s it,” Gabriel says, “That’s the Christmas card right there.” 

Precious might actually be the only word in his vocabulary that gets near to covering any of it, and even then it’s not quite enough to quantify quite how good it feels to be _this_ humiliated in fucking Disneyland with Cas, and Emma, and Claire, with his little brother happy right there, with Gabriel finally properly involved in their lives, and Jess who he’s pretty sure is going to be part of the fold soon enough, all there to bear witness. 

It’s pretty damn good.


	7. Chapter 7

_September, 2033_

“Kind of calling at a bad time, Sam, we’re about thirty seconds away from a meltdown right now. And that’s Cas I’m talking about.” 

“Just ringing to say Happy Anniversary,” 

“Huh?” 

“Come on, Dean, you know it’s your wedding anniversary today. Cas said you were gonna try and schedule date night given it’s ten years…” 

“Right, well, Claire didn’t get the memo that she’s supposed to care about some dumb date and she won’t cooperate with the babysitter.” 

“Who’ve you roped in this time?” 

“Alfie. Nice guy, not all that sure he’s cut out for our kids. So unless we can get Claire to sleep in the next five minutes we’re missing our dinner reservation and getting pizza.” 

“Hey, you reckon you’d ever tell Claire and Emma about the cheating thing?” 

“What? Sam, are we still on that? Come on. It was a fucking _decade_ before they came into the picture. Why would it matter to them?” 

“Thought stuff like that bothered Emma,” 

“Well, probably. Just don’t see how it’s ever gonna up in conversation. Particularly given she’s _eight_. Hey, Emma, wanna take a break from your dolls so Daddy can tell you about this time your Dad screwed someone else a million years ago? Come on, Sam.” 

“I meant when they’re older. Who’s that screaming?” 

“Claire. Oh, that’s Emma joining in which…. Wait… fuck, Cas, why are you _bleeding…?_ Forget that, if anyone’s driving you to ER I’m doing it. Alfie can deal…. All right, I’ll call Benny and guilt trip him. Reckon he can get over here in under fifteen minutes if Alfie can hold the fort till then. Will you, crap, that’s a lot of blood, just hold still so I can look…?” 

“What’s going on, Dean?” 

“We got a situation here, Sam... Hell yeah, we can forgo celebrating wedding anniversaries if that’s what you want, Cas. Just as long as you don’t bleed on the seats of my baby. Look, Sam, I’ll call you back tomorrow, okay?” 

**** 

_September, 2043_

“Stop treating like I’m an old man, boy,” Bobby grouches from the other end of the phone. He’s got gruffer with age which Dean probably wouldn’t have thought possible twenty years ago, but then the accident didn’t exactly help. 

“But you’re my old man, Bobby,” 

“Idjit,” 

“When you next coming to visit? Emma’s been asking after grandpa,” Dean asks, idly flicking through the newspaper that Cas bought home yesterday. He got off work early to realise that he has literally no life outside of his family and none of them were home yet and, anyway, Emma has been asking after Bobby. Given she’s the only one who’ll Bobby let push his wheelchair (it’s an eldest grandchild thing, Dean’s pretty sure), it’d be good for both of them. Emma and Bobby have a connection and they’re on a mass effort to get Bobby a little more positive about the whole thing. Not that any of its working (or that Dean can blame him), but it’ll take time if they ever get through to him at all. “And I know Sam bought you a new all mod con chair, too, so don’t go selling me some story about it being too impractical.” 

“Day I can get out of this damn thing I’ll come visit.” 

“Bobby, come on,” Dean says, “Emma –” 

“– Quit trying to sweet talk me and visit me yourself.” 

“All right,” Dean says, “How’s next weekend?” Bobby just _sighs_ at him. 

“Think Emma’s just pulled in.” Dean says, then he hears the car door slam and Emma’s ‘hey’ of objection, which means they’re probably in for another challenging evening. “With Claire, apparently.” 

Claire slams into the house, kicks her shoes off and throws her bag down on the nearest chair. 

“Hello to you too, sunshine,” Dean comments, raising an eyebrow at her. 

“Bite me,” Claire says, heading for the fridge. Bobby’s laughing at him from the other end of the phone which is probably fair, even though it kind of sucks that Bobby’s never seen Claire’s new attitude problem in person. It’s a fairly new addition to their daily lives, but so is Bobby’s lack of mobility and increased absence. Dean’s gotten used to him being around pretty frequently since he retired (or more, since business dried up to the point that it was pointless bothering) and the new change isn’t welcome. 

“Call me when you’ve got something more interesting to say,” Bobby says, “And quit trying to bribe me with your daughter.” 

“I’ll get her to call you this week,” Dean says, “Bet she’ll convince you.” Bobby hangs up on him, which he was more or less what he was expecting, then he’s left watching Claire angrily drinking milk straight from the carton. “Good to know all those teenage stereotypes have no foundation in real life.” 

He doesn’t get an answer. He wasn’t really expecting one. 

“Hey,” Emma says, following Claire into the kitchen (and towards the coffee). “Dad’s just pulling in too. Think I blocked his parking space.” 

Emma driving should no longer be as foreign a concept as it is, but… he spent a damn long time teaching that girl how to hop, skip, jump and all the rest of it. There’s no way in hell she should be old enough to get behind the wheel, let alone be good enough that she’s long since been allowed to drive Claire to school. Parking isn’t exactly her forte, although Dean’s pretty sure she parks extra badly outside of her house because Claire’s talked her into finding Cas’ general frustration about it amusing (it’s cute, too). 

“Good day?” 

“Better than Claire,” 

“I got those vibes,” Dean says, glancing back up at Claire. She’s still in the middle of her eyeliner kick and she’s done that complicated thing with her hair that Dean absolutely doesn’t understand, and the combined effect is that she _is_ starting to look less like a kid. She probably just looks her age, but that’s still weird to think about. 

“Hello Dean,” Cas says, setting his douchey-briefcase down on the kitchen counter and leaning forward to kiss him. He resists the urge to grab him by the tie and get a proper kiss, because that gets an eye roll and a sarcastic comment from Claire on a good day and, clearly, today is not a good day. 

“You’re gross,” Claire says, only it’s more upset-heated than God-you’re-so-embarrassing, which is usually what they’re treated to. He’s been reliably informed that half of Claire’s friends have never even seen their parents _kiss_ , let alone make out on the sofa. It was also probably supposed to be more discouraging than it was. Dean’s just pumped they’re still a hot couple however many years on. 

“Hello, Claire,” Cas says, frowning at her. Dean’s nearest the door, so it figures that Cas hadn’t taken in the picture of angst that is their daughter yet. 

“What am I, invisible?” Emma asks. 

“Hello, Emma,” Castiel adds, which gets Emma shaking her head and huffing towards the food cupboard instead. It’s no wonder they never have any damn groceries. 

“Might regret asking this but… what’s up, Claire?” 

“Kristy _cheated_ on me,” Claire says, then she slams down the milk and lifts a hand to cover her face. He wasn’t actually expecting a straight answer and he _certainly_ wasn’t expecting a straight answer which made her actually upset. 

Emma’s the one much more likely to cry. Claire just gets pissed, which is actually easier for him to respond to but, nope, they’re borderline tear territory. There’s a reason that hand is covering her face. 

“You’re dating Kristy,” Cas says which, yeah, is news. It’s not exactly surprising news, but it technically classifies as the first they’ve officially heard of it. 

“Called it,” 

“Dean, is now really the time?” 

“Yeah, uh, sorry. What happened?” 

“Like I’d tell you,” Claire says, but doesn’t move from the kitchen. That’s an invitation to keep pushing, at least. If she really didn’t want to talk, she’d have taken the rest of the milk to brood in her room instead. 

“They’ve been dating for about a month, some guys were being homophobic douchebags at schools, so Kristy kissed some boy in the parking lot,” Emma says. Claire sighs and sucks in a deep breath, before staring at where Emma spelt out a vaguely rude joke on the fridge last week. “Don’t see why that gives you a free pass to contaminate the milk.” 

Emma is still particular about things, especially when it comes to milk. 

“Hey, I’ll go buy some more milk later if it bothers you that much,” Dean says, “First, we’re talking this out. Feels like it’s superfluous to say we don’t give a shit that you’re dating a chick.” 

“You think?” 

“Not loving the fact that you’re keeping things from us, though.” 

“Give me a fucking break,” Claire says. He thinks, for about half a second, about telling her off for swearing at him, but he doesn’t really have much of a leg to stand on. The no-swearing-in-front-of-the-kid things died years ago. 

“Kristy’s a dick,” Emma says, “Forget her.” 

“Claire, if someone doesn’t appreciate you enough not to –” 

“– Cas, you really gonna finish that sentence?” Dean asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“We’re taking about two fifteen year olds, Dean.” 

“Kristy’s sixteen,” Dean says, “She’s also a sixteen year old kid who lost her Dad this year, spent a couple of months in care and had a bunch of assholes giving her shit for who she liked.” 

“So you’re saying what she did is okay?” Claire asks, eyes flashing dangerously at him. 

“Course not,” Dean says, “Your Dad’s right, if someone doesn’t appreciate you then screw ‘em, but I don’t know that’s what we’re talking about here. Not everyone knows their folks aren’t gonna care who they bring home as long as they’re good people, Claire. She probably got scared and lashed out. Don’t mean it’s okay, or that you deserved it, or that you haven’t got a right to be upset.” 

“What do I do?” Claire asks, features open and vulnerable now. Again, unusual. She doesn’t usually listen to his advice these days, let alone ask for it. Considering that Claire is, really, much more similar to Dean, whilst Emma shares her inbuilt seriousness with Cas (particularly the Castiel he met in freshman year of college), he’s not all that great at getting through to her. Emma listens to him. Generally, Claire listens to Cas. It means they’ve got all bases covered as a team, it’s just not the way he’d have carved it out in theory. 

“You like this girl?” 

“Yeah,” Claire says, voice tight. 

“Then you act like an adult. Tell her your mad and it’s not okay, but you get why it happened, then try see if you can forgive her. And if you can’t, then you tell her that.” Dean says, flicking the newspaper shut. “Or you just ignore her, tell her she’s a cow and dump her ass.” 

“I still vote option two,” Emma says. 

“Shut up, Emma,” Claire says. 

“She _hurt_ you,” Emma says. 

“Claire, can you handle these kids at school?” Dean asks, because that’s the really important aspect of this whole story. Dean’s not a huge fan of going into schools to kick up a fuss, but pointing out injustices is basically Cas’ hobby; he loves the strongly worded letters to the principle with follow up meetings to ‘discuss the issue’ shit. It is damn sad though. He doesn’t know he was ever optimistic to think that homophobia wasn’t still alive and well, but he had kind of figured that it would be less explicit. 

“Yeah,” Claire says, folding her arms, “They were only picking on her ‘cause they thinks she’s a lesbian. I already told everyone I’m bi, so...” 

“That makes literally no sense to me,” Dean says, “But okay. You’re happy, I’m happy.” 

“Thanks,” Claire says, then she’s stepping across the kitchen and giving him an actual hug, which is kind of a rarity these days. He kinda misses his nine year old cuddle monster some days, even if Claire’s grown up into this bad ass, strong, beautiful teenager. 

“If she does it again, you drop her like _that_ though,” Dean adds, “No one scorns my baby.” 

Claire affectionately punches his shoulder and goes back for the rest of the milk. 

“Why didn’t you want Dad to finish his sentence?” 

“What?” 

“Just then,” Emma says, “Dad was going to say, if someone doesn’t appreciate you enough to respect the sanctity of your relationship then –" 

“– probably wouldn’t have said it like that, dork.” 

“Claire, I don’t care if you’ve had the worst day ever, you be nice to your sister. Anyway, that was probably pretty accurate.” 

“You were implying he was being hypocritical,” Emma says, glancing between them. 

“Wasn’t implying anything,” Dean says, “You’re being kind of quiet over there, Cas, care to take the floor?” 

“Are you suggesting you cheated on Dad?” 

“You read into things too much,” Dean says, sending a frown in Emma’s direction. She’s sensitive. Almost better at picking up on when Dean’s mood’s about to tank than Cas is. It’s not exactly a surprise that she zoned in on a throwaway comment and extrapolated out to an almost correct conclusion, it’s just that he worries that she’ll keep going. They’re eighteen and fourteen so he’d think they’d be mature enough to handle this kind of information (because now it’s been bought up, it’s coming out one way or another), but there’s always the worry that Emma will overthink it to the point where it suddenly becomes a big deal. Him being cagey about it will only make that worse, though, so he doesn’t really have a choice. “Other way round, actually.” Emma blinks at him. “Like, a long ass time ago.” 

“Oh my God,” 

“Okay, cool your jets,” Dean says, “There were a bunch of really good reasons, it was like way early on and we dealt with it. Took a bit of working through but, obviously, it was worth it.” 

“Dad convinced someone who wasn’t you to sleep with him? Holy shit.” 

“Hey now, your Dad is a catch.” 

“Yeah, if you say so,” Emma says, rolling her eyes. They’re much rarer than eye rolls from Claire, maybe, but it’s still a pretty common occurrence. Dean reckons they get it from Cas. 

“I’m serious,” Dean says.

“He’s telling the truth,” Cas says. His voice sounds kind of off which Dean hopes isn’t related to the fact that Dean just bought this whole thing up, because he didn’t _mean_ to and it would kind of suck if he was pissed about it. “Your father, too.” 

“Lots of people were bummed out when we found each other.” 

“Like who?” Emma asks and apparently he needn’t have worried about Emma freaking out about this, because she seems completely chill. She has been getting a lot more relaxed about everything this past year since she told them she wasn’t ready for college yet (which they’d known, anyway) and wanted to defer her applications, so there’s a chance that Cas is right about him worrying too much. Cas is usually right. 

“Benny,” Cas says, because he’s a total shit. 

“Benny?” Emma asks, eyebrows skyrocketing. 

“Like, kind of hot Benny?” Claire asks, glancing at Emma. Clearly, they’ve talked about that before. 

“That is _wholly_ disturbing, but yeah, I tapped that.” 

“You slept with _Benny_?” Claire asks, gaping at him. 

“Why is this such a surprise?” Dean asks, glancing at Cas, “When did we become so uncool that us having sex became an alien concept?” 

“You? Fifteen years ago, at least,” Claire says. 

“You suggesting Cas is cooler than me?” 

“Yes,” Emma says. She softens the blow by leaning forward to nudge his arm, though, because she’s Emma and she’s so in-tuned to frigging everyone’s feelings that it’s virtually impossible for her to be mean to anyone. “A lot cooler.” 

“Well that’s bullshit,” Dean says, as Cas side-smirks at him. 

“Anyone else, or is Benny all you’ve got?” 

He doesn’t like Claire being upset, there’s curiosity creeping into her voice and, well, he is definitely not above pandering to that. It keeps the conversation steamrolling onwards, too, just in case Emma does decide to start overthinking. 

“Cas slept with Crowley,” Dean says, “Balthazar, pretty sure you’ve met him a couple of times. Meg.” 

“You slept with a girl?” 

“Dude, we’re both bisexual. You know this.” 

“Yeah,” Emma says, “But you met in the first week of college, so we figured…” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, “Took us nearly four years to start dating, though.” 

“I have slept with a large number of women,” Cas interjects, “Although, I would hazard a guess that Dean has slept with more.” 

“Maybe,” Dean says. 

“Dean slept with Anna,” 

“ _Auntie Anna_?” 

“Dude, not cool,” Dean says, frowning at his husband. “And she’s like your second aunt, or something. And this is way before we were together.” 

“It wasn’t that long before we got together, Dean.” 

“Man, why are you still bitter about that?” They always said they’d be open about this kind of stuff, which is why it feels so odd that they’re both surprised. They weren’t hiding it. Apparently it’s just hard to believe that they used to get around. “The level of surprise in this room is kind of insulting,” Dean says, glancing between the three of them. “You wanna probe us about our sex lives some more? Can tell you how often we get laid nowadays, if you want.” 

“Pass,” Emma says. 

“Ditto,” 

“Perhaps we should order a take away,” Cas says, probably because it’s his cooking night, which he’s always been a dab hand at getting out of. Still, Cas has been on his back about his diet with renewed fervour lately, so agreeing is probably getting him out of eating some zucchini risotto or some crap. He’s definitely not going to turn that down. 

“Chinese?” 

“I’m in,” 

“Shall I get the menu?” 

“We always order the same thing anyway,” Claire says, rolling her eyes. 

“Don’t forget about getting more milk,” Emma says, “You can pick it up at the same time.” 

“I can, can I?” Dean asks, as Claire grabs her bag off the chair and both move towards the door. Apparently that’s the end of the conversation which is fine, actually, because it’s Thursday which means they all have a date with this crappy reality TV program that Emma fell in love with years ago in about an hour. Take away and TV with Cas and his teenage daughters sounds pretty sweet, actually. 

Anyway, there’s something up with Cas and he’d like a chance to dig without either of their kids present. He’s been quiet for a few days which means it can’t _just_ be because Dean bought up the cheating thing. Especially since that got such a minimal reaction. 

“What’s up, Cas?” Dean asks, after they’ve been left alone. 

Cas just frowns at his hands and shakes his head, then he’s disappearing into the hall to get the menu and order the take away, leaving Dean alone in the kitchen with the newspaper all over again. 

Definitely something up. 

* 

He’s picked up their food (and the damn milk) and Cas has disappeared to take a phone call by the time Emma brings it up again. He sort of knew she would, even though he didn’t figure it would be when Cas was out of the room. He could have used the support, actually, because he’s not entirely sure of the protocol of what you do or don’t say to teenagers with questions. It’s not like they haven’t had the sex talk before (Dean’s pretty sure Cas is the only parent who actually enjoys _the talk_ ), but it’s never swung back round onto _them_ before. His former student self would have been preaching honesty in all forms, and it’s not like he doesn’t want his kids well informed and all that stuff, he’s just pretty sure there’s things they doesn’t want to know these things about _them_. 

“How come you both slept around so much in college?” 

“Well, sex is awesome,” Dean says, “And we were probably too into each other to date people but not ready to actually be in a relationship so… we had a lot of casual sex up to the point we started sleeping with each other instead of other people.” 

“Sleeping with each other instead of other people? You are so lame, Padre.” 

“Oh come on, are we not done with that yet?” Dean asks, meeting Claire’s eyes over his sweet and sour chicken. Her eyeliner’s smudged which means she probably spent the intermittent time crying in her room, which really sucks. He’d almost like to take his whole speech about Krissy back and tell Claire to stay away from any damn person who’d dare make her upset like that, but that’s just his protective instincts kicking in. He’s also completely done with having the Padre thing come back to haunt him. It’s enough to make him miss _Daddy_. 

“You started it,” 

“Oh really, Claire-Bear,” Dean says, which gets him a prawn cracker thrown at his head and a scowl. Apparently the nickname became embarrassing and uncool when she hit eleven and it’s certainly not welcome now, but if she is going to insist on _Padre_. 

“Shut up,” 

“You shut up,” 

“You can’t tell me to shut up, I’m your daughter.” 

“Well I’m your Dad, you should show me some frigging respect,” Dean says. It’s probably less effective because he’s got a mouthful of Chinese take-away (which gets a small frown from Emma, too), but whatever. He also doesn’t mean it in the slightest. It’s awesome that they’re old enough that they get to hang out together like this. This parenting stuff just gets better, because now they’re nearly mini-adults and they’re both awesome. 

“You sound like Dad,” 

“I am your father, you should show me some respect,” Claire and Emma both say in unison, voices both forcefully deep in their usual Cas impression. It shouldn’t still be funny (and Cas certainly doesn’t think it is), but it really is, and Dean’s still trying not to chuckle at both of them – they have a theoretical united front about how not funny their Cas impression is – when Cas steps back into the room. 

“Dean, can I speak with you a moment?” Cas asks, the little good humour from earlier gone, now replaced with a tight frown that clearly means the phone conversation was not good news. Dean’s up and out the room before he’s really heard the words, anyway, because he knows that expression. “Claire has six unauthorised absences from school this week,” Cas says, the second the door’s clicked shut behind him. 

“What?” 

“I’m concerned, Dean. She lied to us about Krissy, now she’s been skipping school.” 

“Cas, the Krissy thing’s probably nothing. She’s fourteen. Fourteen year olds are always too embarrassed to talk to their parents about their love lives. As for school… what lessons are we talking, here? Gym or math? The kind of thing everyone skips or the serious stuff.” 

“I don’t see how it makes a difference,” Cas says, frowning at him, “It’s still skipping.” 

“We can’t all be Castiel’s with a hundred percent attendance and a perfect GPA.” 

“You’re defending her actions?” 

“I’m not, Cas, I’m saying you’re jumping the gun thinking it needs defending in the first place. She’s a good kid,” Dean says, glancing back to the door. “She’s having a rough week. Whoever called you from the school doesn’t give a damn about teenager’s lives and break-ups and all the rest of it.” 

“It’s not acceptable to skip classes because of a break-up, Dean, particularly given that happened _today_ so would not account for the classes she didn’t attend at the beginning of this week.” 

“I’m not saying don’t talk to her about it,” Dean says, “I’m saying don’t head in there, all guns blazing, condemning her.” 

“I’m worried about her behaviour,” 

“She’s been kind of moody, maybe,” Dean concedes, “But that’s every teenager, Cas. Emma just happened to be some freaky exception.” 

“I think she’s been smoking,” 

“What?” Dean asks, “Claire? Sat in our front room, eating Chinese take away on family night, fourteen year old Claire?” 

“Her clothes smell like cigarette smoke. Her leather jacket in particular.” 

“So one of her friend’s smoke,” 

“Dean, why are you being purposefully ignorant about this?” Cas asks, clearly agitated, and it’s beginning to look like _that’s_ what’s been keeping Cas quiet these past few days, which is just dumb because… they bought that girl up. He knows what she is and isn’t capable of. She’s angry at the world, sure, but that’s probably just because she actually see’s what going on it. She’s snaps at all of them, she’s moody, she could probably use an attitude adjustment, but _this_ is not in her MO. 

“Because I know my own daughter, Cas, and I know she wouldn't lie to us. If she's skipping classes it's a blip or its cramps or whatever else. It's not a _concern_. So I'm not about to start accusing her without any damn proof.” 

Cas lips thin, then he's heading to the coat cupboard. Dean's actually surprised he knows where the damn thing is considering how little he uses it (trench coat mark whatever is currently at home on the back of a chair in the kitchen, where it’s been for approximately the past ten years since they bought the house). He pulls out Claire's usual black leather jacket, thrusting it into Dean’s hands. 

"Doesn't smell like smoke to me," Dean says, even though that's kind of a lie, actually. There's a layer of Claire's usual soup and hair stuff (he's still not qualified in girl, really), but there is something that could well be tobacco smoke underneath. Cas slips a hand in the jacket pocket, comes out with nothing. "See." Then he goes for the inside pocket and... 

Yeah, that's a packet of cigarettes. 

"Are you going to suggest these are her friends too?" 

"You go poking around in our kid’s stuff now?" Dean demands, because he's not sure he really wants to think about what he should be really pissed about. His stomach’s dropped though, and he’s reaching for the packet of cigarettes just to prove to himself that they’re actually real."We're _those_ parents?" 

"I found them by accident,” Cas says, distracted. 

"When?" Dean asks, "And if you say anything other than five minutes ago, so help me Cas, I will - 

“- Monday," Cas interjects, "Eight have disappeared since then." 

"Well that's _something_ ," Dean snaps, "You forgot to mention our daughter smokes now, but I guess at least it's only two a day. What the fuck, Cas?" 

“I was hoping they _were_ someone else’s,” Cas says, then he’s frowning a little more, “Dean, maybe we’re not strict enough.” 

“So now we’re shitty parents?” 

“That’s not what I’m saying, Dean, stop trying to start an argument rather than having an actual discussion about this. I _understand_ that you would prefer to pretend this is some kind of misunderstanding, but –” 

“– hey, food’s going cold,” Emma says, opening the door to the kitchen and staring at them both. Dean’s holding both Claire’s leather jacket and the damn cigarettes, whilst Cas is clearly in his irritated stance. It was probably the raised voices that had Emma pushing open the door in the first place, because she hates yelling. Claire is right behind her, though, and then she sees him stood there and… well, it’s pretty incriminating evidence of snooping, even if it’s Cas’ fault. It’s also Claire completely outed. 

There’s about two seconds from Claire _staring_ at them to her slamming back out the front door. Dean’s not even really surprised, actually, because he’s pretty sure he’d have done the same thing. 

“Great,” Emma says, “Great, Dad.” 

“You knew about this?” Dean demands, “Am I the only person in this damn house who didn’t know about this?” 

“What are you doing, Dean?” 

“I’m going after her,” Dean says, grabbing his own jacket out the cupboard. 

“Go with him, Emma,” Cas says, because apparently he’s _incompetent_ and needs some fucking supervision, “I’ll stay here in case she comes back.” 

“How long?” Dean asks, as Emma’s climbing into the passenger seat of the Impala, because for all that it’s been less than a minute since she walked out, Claire’s already disappeared. She doesn’t even have a damn jacket, because Dean pretty much threw it in Cas’ direction in his rush to get out the door. “How long has my whole family been lying to me?” Emma doesn’t say anything. He’s not sure he blames her. He wouldn’t have ratted Sam out to anyone at her age. He probably shouldn’t have even asked her too, he’s just not thinking straight. “Left or right?” 

“Right,” Emma says, as they pull out. She’s tense but not nearly as tense as Dean’s feeling because, fuck. Claire _has_ been lying to them. She’s been skipping school and smoking and she’s _pissed off_. Cas was right. Apparently he doesn’t know her as well as he thought. He’d never even _thought_ that much about cigarettes, either, but now he’s jumping over to lung cancer, it being some kind of gate way addiction, her breaking the law to get the damn things in the first place… and they’re not nice avenues of thought. They’re probably way off what they’re dealing with, too, but this protective-parenthood crap tends to involve a lot of overthinking. 

“So, what, now we’re bad parents and we’ve screwed you both up?” Dean asks the silence of the car, whilst Emma’s looking at the window, because his gut hurts and he’s worried and he’s definitely freaking out. 

“Stop the car,” Emma says, commanding enough that Dean just does. She’s serious, deadly serious. “Do _not_ put this on me.” Emma says, folding her arms, voice breaking. “I’ll look for her myself.” 

She’s up and out the car before Dean can express that’s not what he meant, damnit, and he shouldn’t have raised his fucking voice, because Emma hates that. He’s screwing everything up tonight and he’d honest to god thought it was going to be a good day. He woke up sure of it. 

“Cas,” Dean says, fumbling with his phone. He answers on the second ring. 

“Have you found her?”

“No,” Dean says, and then, “I fucked up, Cas. Emma’s gone off on her own. She’s upset and I’m pretty sure she’s gonna be driving.” 

“She’s eighteen, Dean, she’s an adult.” 

“She’s Emma,” 

“One problem at a time, Dean. Claire is upset, angry and not wearing a jacket.” 

“Fuck,” Dean says, “Cas,” 

“It’s couple of cigarettes and a few missed lessons, not a drug problem. You’re overthinking. It’s going to be fine.” 

“Love you,” Dean exhales, stomach twisting. He needs to get his act together. He’s not helping anything still parked at the side of the road (and Cas would give him hell if he started driving before he hung up), but he just… this is messing with his head. Cas was probably right to try and send Emma with him, before he managed to piss her off too. 

“Likewise,” Cas says, “I’ll call you if either of them show up home.” 

“Okay,” Dean says, then he hangs up, puts the car into gear and carries driving round the block. 

* 

Cas calls him about fifteen minutes later, although it feels more like an hour thanks to the overthinking, the worry and the growing headache which is telling him that everything that’s happened from four PM onwards is completely his fault. 

“Emma found her, they’re both home,” Cas says, “Where are you?” 

“Less than half a block away. Jefferson Street.” 

“I’m coming to meet you,” Cas says, then, “Your father is upset, Claire.” A beat. 

“Because he was defending you and you’ve broken our trust.” 

“Cas, you don’t need to…” 

“I will decided what I do and do not need to do, Dean,” Cas says, then hangs on up at him. 

* 

By the time Cas has reached him, he's a total mess. The adrenaline or the shock or whatever else it was has worn off, then he's just feeling completely shitty. Cas is right in that it's not a big of a deal as it feels like; it's a couple of cigarettes, a few classes and a secret girlfriend. In the grand scale of things, it's minimal. It is. It's just that he was so convinced that Cas was wrong and he'd have been convinced enough to roll on with the denial. He didn't notice. He was so damn sure that everything was fine and dandy that he actively didn't notice. He spends so much time worrying about Emma and her serious, sensitive overthinking (because that's not him, so he doesn't understand it the way Cas does, so he worries), that he wasn't really thinking about Claire's anger at the world. He dropped the ball. 

Cas opens the car and slides into the seat next to him in the Impala and Dean is so fucking relived that he's there. By that point, his head is resting on the damn steering wheel and he's trying to get his act together. He can hate himself about all of this later, because right now there's the more pressing problem of the two angry teenagers in their front room. He should be focusing on that. 

It's Cas' hand falling to its natural place on Dean's knee that pulls him out of his funk and actually has him looking up and taking a breath. 

"I'm fine," Dean says, clearing his throat. “Should be with Claire stead of wasting your time with me." 

"Claire is more likely to speak with us if she's discussed it with Emma first," Cas says which, well, Dean's pretty sure it's an excuse, but it's probably true. They’re pretty close considering they’re so different. "Dean," 

"Am I becoming my Dad?" 

"No," 

"Sure?" 

It certainly feels like he's so far into his own problems and his own crappy head that he's not paying enough attention to anyone else and Emma said _don't put this on me_ and that's essentially what he always wanted to say to the guy but couldn't. He knows he's not a carbon copy of the guy, obviously, because he's there all the damn time and he knows his kid's friends names and whether they've done their homework, but the idea that his own problems might be screwing them up keeps him up at night plenty. 

"Entirely." Cas says. 

"Happy wedding anniversary, by the way." Cas smiles. "This might be the worst one yet." 

"That seems like an exaggeration," Cas says, "I distinctly remember one which involved a trip to the emergency room." 

"Not meaning to diminish your emergency, but this is actually worse." 

"I assure you, we have many more years for increasingly worse anniversaries." 

"Should both call in sick tomorrow. Hang out," Dean says, turning to look at him. Cas looks good, not that that’s anything new. This fatherhood growing old gig suits him. It’s the fact that the guy knew to walk the half a block out here just so he could have a few seconds to regroup, though, which makes him want to crawl inside the guy’s chest and live there. It’s his soft frown. His stupid blue gaze that see’s right through him, always. 

"We can't do that twice in a month, Dean." 

"You're a pain in my ass," Dean says, and just looks at him for a few more seconds. It shouldn’t help as much as it does. He doesn’t even really need Cas to lean forward and kiss him to feel like he’s defrosting, but it doesn’t harm any. "We should head back." 

"Are you okay?" 

"No," Dean says, "But it can wait." 

* 

Clearly, Cas’ semi-plan (or, alternatively, excuse to make sure Dean was okay) to let Emma talk some sense into Claire hasn’t worked, because when they get back Emma is furiously putting the rest of their take-away into the fridge (and Dean had sort of forgotten that none of them have really eaten yet, but now he’s remembered he’s _hungry_ ), looking a little bit like she’s about to walk out too. 

“She’s acting like a spoilt bitch,” Emma says, almost-slamming the fridge door then turning to face them both. 

“Hey,” Dean says, “Watch it, lady.” 

“Emma, perhaps we should eat whilst your father talks to Claire,” 

“You want me to talk to her?” Dean asks, frowning at him. “You sure? Well, if I fuck it up, I did warn you.” 

“Go, Dean,” Cas says, heading for the cupboard to get himself a wine glass. Dean’s not entirely sure he blames the guy for needing a drink, but his younger self is definitely judging him hard for the wine thing. He’s pretty sure it’s Lucifer and Michael’s influence. 

Still, Cas trust him to try and sort this out, even if he’s clearly unqualified for at least sixteen reasons. Cas trusts him. More than that, Dean’s pretty sure that look meant he actually thinks Dean’s better placed to do so, not just that he’s already upset Emma so can’t be left to deal with that situation, which means he has to at least try. 

He knocks on Claire’s door before opening it. She’s sat on her bed, knees drawn up, headphones on, but takes them off when she sees him in the doorway. She’s still in heated-angry-upset mode, which means this will probably end badly. 

“What?” 

“We have three rules in this house, Claire. Respect us, respect your sister and respect yourself. Given the way your sister’s acting downstairs, I’d say you’re doing a damn good job of breaking all three. You wanna tell us what the hell all of this is about?” Nothing. 

“Why have you been skipping school, Claire?” 

“What?” 

“The school called,” Dean says, “They do that. Pretty much how we got onto the Claire’s worrying behaviour topic earlier.” 

Claire takes a few seconds to process that, then she’s angry all over again. 

“You nearly dropped out of school when you were sixteen,” Claire throws at him, “You said you skipped all the time. So get off my _case_ ” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, “You know why that was? My mom was buried before I hit Kindergarten, and the second Sammy hit school age he was suddenly my responsibility. We swapped schools every couple of months. Dad took off for days at a time. Sometimes he left enough money, sometimes he didn't. Wasn't a single damn person looking out for me when I was a kid so, yeah, I skipped school. Sometimes I was working, sometimes I was just too damn fed of being the new kid and being behind cause I never got a chance to catch up. Only reason I stuck it out is because Bobby got involved, got Dad to stick it out in one place whilst I finished up. Convinced me I could go to college and Sam would be okay without me. I'd have given anything to have one parent who gave a damn about my education at your age, let alone two. I'm not asking you to be thankful for that, Claire, because you're entitled. I'm just saying if there's something going on in your life that's worrying you then you can tell us and we'll work out some way to fix it, and if we can't fix it then we can at least talk about it. If this is just some causeless teenage rebellion then I'm asking you to quit it and show us some damn respect.” 

“What happened to do whatever makes you happy, and if it all goes to shit creek call us and we'll bail you out?” Claire asks, eyes still shinning, shoulders still tensed up and ready for another fight. 

“You explain to me how screwing up your future and lying to your family is making you happy, and I'll apologies and get _off your case_ right now.” Dean says, nearly yells, and he _never_ yells. Cas has always been the one that’s good at the discipline stuff, but this is just… too much. “We’re pissed because we care about you and because we were trusting you, Claire.” 

“You were going through my stuff,” Claire says, “That’s not _trust_.” Dean actually fully agrees with her on that one, but they’re a united front which means they both take the fall for this kind of crap. He can carry on arguing about it with Cas later. 

“ _Why_ have you been skipping school and smoking?” 

“Back _off_.” 

“So you’re not going to tell us what this is about?” Dean asks, to which he gets nothing. She just glares at him. It’s a glare that’s thinly veiled the threat of tears, but it’s a glare none the less. “Fine, you’re grounded.” 

“What?” Claire demands and, admittedly, that’s new. They’ve never grounded either of them before, ever, but then this is the first damn time he’s been lied to, or had either of them skip school or fucking smoking. He wouldn’t say they’ve had an easy parenting ride, because both of them came with a whole batch of issues they had to tangle out and work around, but most of the difficult stuff was when they were kids. They’ve been angels for years. 

“What did you expect?” Dean asks, “And if you haven’t apologised to your sister for whatever you did to upset her, I’m revoking your laptop privileges for anything but homework. I’ll send Cas up with the rest of your dinner.” 

Claire just _stares_ at him like his lost his mind. 

They’re eating when Dean gets back downstairs and Emma looks a little more relaxed, at least, so clearly Cas has worked a little of his magic. 

“She’s grounded,” Dean says, sitting down, “She won’t talk.” 

“Grounded?” Emma asks, raising her eyebrows. “You grounded her?” 

“Hey, I can be strict and crap,” Dean says, swallowing, “And she has to apologies to you, too. Let me know when she has.” 

“Okay,” 

“And, Emma, about in the car, I…” Dean stops, because he can hear (loud) footsteps on the stairs, then Claire is throwing open the door. She’s a picture, in her black band t-shirt that Dean’s never heard of (she’s been trying to introduce him to the new version of rock for years, but it ain’t happening), smudged eyeliner and an expression of mixed rage and emotion. 

“You wanna know what this is about?” Claire demands, and she’s about three seconds away from tears, shoulders squared, glaring at all three of them. “This,” she says, then she slams down a printed off photo onto the table in between Cas and Emma’s plates. 

It’s a woman and a kid. He recognises the woman, definitely, but it takes a few seconds for him to place where he recognises her from. 

“Who’s that?” Emma asks. 

“Amelia,” Cas answers, straight off the bat, straightening the picture in front of him. The breath rushes out of Dean’s lungs all at once and he doesn’t know how the hell Cas is acting so calm, because… because the last thing he was expecting to be dealing with today was this. 

“My mother,” Claire supplies, because the name Amelia doesn’t mean anything to Emma. She was too young, really, and most of the times they met with Amelia Emma was asleep or with Missouri. They did meet. She wanted to meet the whole family before she signed the papers, but Dean’s not surprised she doesn’t remember. 

“Claire, how do you have this?” 

“She contacted me,” Claire says, one of the tears spilling over now, “Told me how it all went down. That she’s got her life back together. That she keeps thinking about me.” 

“You know how it all went down, Claire.” 

“I didn’t know they had to ween me off methadone after I was born,” Claire says, “Or that signing the adoption papers was the last thing she did before she went to prison.” 

“She got her life together, huh?” Dean says, swallowing, “We weren’t keeping those things from you, Claire, it’s just didn’t really come up in conversation. You were seven when you first asked about it. Pretty sure you wouldn’t have known what methadone was.” 

“Is the child hers?” Cas asks, still studying the photo. He’s not as calm as he looks. Dean’s pretty sure he’s majorly freaking out behind the stoic glare, actually, which is probably fair enough. 

“Yeah,” Claire says, still standing, shoulders still squared. 

“You have another sister?” Emma asks, looking up at her. 

“No,” Claire says, “She’s _nothing_ to do with me.” 

“You could have told us about this,” 

“I didn’t want you to be upset.” Claire says, voice breaking. She’s really crying now and Dean’s not entirely sure that he blames her, not at all. 

“Sit down, Claire.” 

She doesn’t sit. 

“You were with her for six weeks.” Dean says, “We met you at nine weeks, but you had to stay in the PICU, then a couple of weeks in care whilst we sorted out the adoption. Took longer than with Emma, because we wanted your Mom happy with the arrangement. She was just a kid in over her head. She liked us cause we’d taken in Emma. Not sure how much you know about that, but… well, Emma was twenty months old when we adopted her, at which point she had a couple of words in her vocabulary, could just about walk, had very limited social skills and had suffered some pretty serious neglect. You… well, you were a little behind, not nearly as much, but your Mom read about how much Emma had changed in our file and figured we could treat you right, too.” 

“She’s not my Mom,” Claire says, arms folded. “I don’t have a mom.” 

“If that’s how you want it,” Dean says, mouth dry. 

“We told Amelia she could stay in contact,” Cas says, “But she decided it would be too difficult.” 

“She wants to meet me.” 

“You wanna meet her?” 

“I don’t know” Claire says, hands folded into fists. “But there’s your fucking reason. Happy?” She finishes, then she’s storming back out the room and up the stairs, her steps quieter this time. She left the photo of Amelia on the table. 

“Pretty good reason,” Dean says, to break the silence. 

“Dean,” Cas says, standing up to move the photo away from the food. 

“How much would you be drinking if your birth Mom suddenly dropped you a line on Facebook messenger?” Dean asks, “Emma, could you take her up her food? Maybe establish whether she wants to be left alone or for one of us to come up there.” 

“Sure,” She says, hand dropping to his shoulder as she stands up. 

“Cas,” Dean says, because he’s dumping his plate in the sink which is, well, unusual. The guy hasn’t got any more laid back about doing the dishes in the past three decades or so that he’s known the guy. 

“I have work to do,” 

“Are you fucking _kidding me_ right now?” Dean snaps, which has Emma scrunching up her shoulders near the fridge and Cas sending him a weary look. It’s probably good news for all three of them that that’s when Sam decides to call him, because it at least means he’s distracted enough to let Cas slink off to his fucking study without starting an argument. There’s probably been enough drama today. 

“Happy china anniversary,” Sam says, after Dean’s answered and grunted a hello. 

“What?” Dean asks. 

“China is the traditional gift for the –” 

“Man, I really thought marrying Jess would make you less frigging gay,” Dean says, as Emma gets Claire’s dinner out the microwave. “And I speak as a guy who’s been married to a dude for a long ass time, the arbitrary anniversary of which is apparently today.” 

“You know it’s your anniversary, Dean.” 

“Maybe,” Dean says, “But only because you’ve rang me up every fucking year to remind me.” 

“What’s got your panties in a twist?” Sam asks, as Emma heads upstairs. He could kill Gabriel for being such a loud-mouthed pain in the ass _and_ Cas for forever being shameless when it comes to talking about their sex life, because he doesn’t need this kind of crap from his brother. 

“Maybe it’s the fact that my damn panties are gathering dust somewhere,” Dean shoots back. 

“Wow, TMI.” 

“You bought it up,” Dean says, then exhales. “Sorry, bad day.” 

“What’s up?” 

“I don’t even have the energy to explain right now,” Dean says, “Teenagers, Sammy. You got this to look forward to in three years’ time, cept yours’ll be an even bigger pain in the ass cause they got your genes. Man, I can’t even explain how annoying you were at thirteen. How are they?” 

“Asleep,” 

“Screw you,” Dean says, though there’s not much heat to it. “Any luck with Bobby?” 

“Hey,” Emma says, back downstairs and pausing in the doorway. 

“Give us a sec, Sam,” Dean says, “She okay?” 

“She’s on the phone to Krissy. Think she listened to what you said. I’m gonna head up to bed.” 

“Okay. Look, about earlier…” 

She crosses the room before he has a chance to actually apologies. She stops to hug him and Dean's not entirely sure why he wasn't expecting it, but he wasn't. She's only a couple of inches shorter than Cas, these days, but she still feels a lot smaller when Dean wraps his arms around her back in return, cell still clutched in one hand. 

"Don't worry about Claire," She says, still mid hug, "I'll look out for her." 

"I know," 

"Make sure you eat something," Emma says, stepping back and offering him a smile. 

"Will do," 

"Something with vegetables in." 

"Fine." 

“And get some sleep,” 

“Isn’t this my damn job?” Dean asks, as she heads back out the kitchen. 

“Night, Padre.” 

Frigging Claire spreading her sense of humour throughout the whole damn house. 

“You’ve got good kids, Dean,” Sam says, when he’s back on the phone. He’s got Emma, who’s possibly the most caring person he’s ever met. She’s good down to her core, Emma, and getting stronger by the day. And he’s got Claire, who’s on the phone talking it out with her girlfriend after a colossally shitty day, which is a hell of a mature thing to do for a fourteen year old kid. She’s funny and strong and angry and about as protective of Emma as Dean was over Sam at her age (only without the co-dependency). She’s pretty much exactly how Dean always figured a daughter of his would turn out, only really awesome. 

“The best,” Dean agrees, leaning back on the kitchen counter so he can rip into his little brother for rocking the white picket fence, as if he isn’t doing exactly the same thing (although at least he isn't quite so conventional). 

*

He doesn't much feel like sitting in bed waiting for Cas to do whatever it is that's so fucking important that can't wait, so after he’s eaten and Cas still hasn’t emerged he winds up channel surfing to try and shut his shitty head up. He's settled on some dumb program about workers spending a day doing their CEOs jobs and talking about their experiences because it's both mindless and vaguely compelling. It feel the void, anyway. 

"What are we watching, Padre?" Claire asks from the doorway, halfway through the first commercial break. Dean would put money on her having been crying again, which he's not really surprised at, even though she's clearly making an effort for her tone to sound light. He’s just glad she’s seeking him out though. It’s been a crappy time in the life of one Claire Winchester-Novak and it’s good that she’s gets that they’re _there_ for her. 

"Whatever you want," Dean returns, as she crosses the room and sits down next to him, head resting on his shoulder. He doesn't get this behaviour from Claire anymore, like she's suddenly rolled back a couple of years, but it's stupidly wonderful to be able to throw an arm around her shoulders and not have her scowl and pull away. Especially after a day like today, when all he really wants to do is shelter her from every single shitty thing the world could do to her. 

"How come dad cheated on you?" She asks, voice stripped of all the attitude too. "I mean, what gives?" 

"I took off with my Dad," Dean says, "Cas was busy trying to mediate between all his brothers and I was dumb enough not to be able to handle it. Then my dad dropped by. He used to, well, he was involved in a lot of crap. That time he pulled me in too. Was with him three months. We were calling each other but we weren't really talking, you know? So, your dad got it into his head that I didn't care, and he was upset, so he went to some bar, etc. etc..." 

"Dad thought you didn't care about him?" Claire asks, forehead scrunched up, "But you're like, grossly in love. All the time." 

"Secret is, we we're both kinda fucked up sometimes. Hell, I still am. You're seeing us a few decades down the line.” Dean says, pausing for a second, “Hope you know we're both grossly in love with you, too." 

"Yeah," Claire says, frowning at the TV. "Guess so." 

"No guessing needed," Dean says, squeezing her shoulder slightly. "We won't be upset if you decided you want Amelia in your life, either. I lost my Mom mine young. Cas' Mom's always been pretty cold and never really forgave him for picking me. We get it. That you have a chance here." 

"I don't need her," Claire says, and she sounds a little choked up again, gaze fixed too intently on the TV. 

"Don't have to need someone to want them. It's up to you, okay? Don't factor whatever you think it is that we're thinking about this in your decision. She's got an invite to thanksgiving and Christmas if you want her too." 

"Thanks," Claire says, shifting a little closer, then she settles into silence. 

"Dean, have you taken your..." Cas trails off when he enters the room, glancing at the pair of them on the sofa. It's definitely passed her unofficial bedtime. "What are we watching?" 

"I didn't pick it," Claire says, "It's crap." 

"Your father does have terrible taste in television." 

"And men," Dean throws back, as Cas crosses the room to sit down on Claire's other side. Claire swings her legs up on the sofa, resting over Cas' legs. "You know, Claire, second time we met Amelia, she asked about our sex life. Guess she figured it would tell her a lot about our relationship. Missouri wasn't expecting it and I sure as hell wasn't, either, but Cas bursts straight into a full breakdown of our personal sexual history. From everything to frequency, frigging positions to how Emma had changed things. Couldn’t look Missouri in the eye for a week." 

"What did Dad even say?" 

"Everything," Dean says, darkly. 

"Hey," Emma says, stepping into the room. “I heard voices." 

"Come join the party," Dean says, "We're watching... well, something." Emma nods and perches herself on the arm of the sofa, Dean's side, with her knees resting against his arm. 

The sofa isn’t really meant for four people but it’s good to have everyone close like this. 

"I recorded the show from earlier," Emma says. 

"Oh, awesome." Dean says, passing her the remote. "Family night, late edition, it is." 

"Emma said it's your anniversary," Claire says, "Sorry it blew." 

"Wedding anniversary," Dean says, "Sam's the only one into keeping up with that at this point. We had years of anniversaries before we got hitched. Wasn't into resetting the counter. Not even sure what number this is." 

He knows Sam said it was china but, really, he has got a clue what the hell that’s supposed to mean. 

"We adopted Emma when she was two, four years after we got married. So it's twenty years." 

"Huh," Dean says. 

"Thirty years in total." 

"Dad told Amelia about their sex life," Claire says to Emma, "in detail." 

"She asked," 

"You tell everyone who asks?" Claire asks. 

"Yes," Dean says, "He does," 

"So if I asked how often you get down you'd answer?" 

"Claire, you don't wanna go there." 

"Generally, whenever we're satisfied that you won't be able to hear," Cas says, "Either if we have compelling evidence that you're asleep, if you're out or if we know you're watching illicit late night television with your headphones on." 

"I did not need to know that," 

"Told you," Dean says. 

"So which anniversary do you celebrate?" Emma asks. They’re probably going to have to watch the episode all over again because none of them are really paying attention, but Dean reckon they need this. A little time after the drama to remind them all that they’re a damn family and they get through whatever comes at them accordingly; together, usually with a strong dose of sass from either Claire or Cas, and a good deal of crap jokes from Dean. Emma keeps them all from yelling at each other. It’s good. They work. They’re a proper solid family unit most days of the week, today’s just… a bad day. 

"The one where you started sleeping with each other instead of other people?" Claire suggests, which gets a puzzled look from Cas. Dean rolls his eyes. 

"Didn't really get together till a while after that," Dean says. 

"Dean accidently said he was in love with me at a party on November twelfth. We celebrate that." 

"Accidentally?" 

"Like I said, we're idiots." 

"We should do a thing," Claire says, "For your thirty years. Get Sam and Jess over." 

"And Bobby," 

"Gabe," Claire says, "And Kali, I guess." 

"I'm sure Benny will want to come. He'd find it amusing." 

"We actually doing this?" Dean asks. 

"Given how stubborn and occasionally pig headed we are, thirty years is an impressive achievement." 

“Only if you two clowns organise it,” Dean says, “I draw the line at throwing myself a damn party.” 

"I might invite Amelia. You both met her and she sounded pretty made up that you're still together.” Claire says, voice forcefully light. 

"And regularly fucking," Cas adds, "Be sure to mention that the situation has improved since our last discussion about the subject in your next correspondence." 

" _Dad,_ " 

"How is he the cool one? Come on. I'm cool. I'm hella cool." 

“You try too hard,” Claire says, giving him a consoling pat on the shoulder. “Although Dad’s still pretty pathetic, too. 

“Perfect,” Dean mutters darkly, but, actually, it’s not all that far off it. 

* 

Dean ends up in bed first because Cas had a sudden realisation that the dishes weren’t done and apparently couldn’t live with it. Dean’s still kind of pissed, actually, because he’s not entirely sure he cares how important Cas’ work was, it didn’t need to be done today. He doesn’t want another argument, though, so he’s settled on passive aggressively facing the wrong side of the bed for conversation and pretending to be asleep. Apparently, it’s not working. 

"Dean, turn round,” Cas says, after his slid into bed and wrapped his arms around him. His hands are cold too. The freak must have done the washing up in cold water because they’re not _usually_ this cold. 

"You aint the boss of me," Dean says, but turns in the space leant to him by Cas' arms anyway, "Hey," 

"Hello," Cas says, and kisses him. He knows the guy well enough to register that he's trying to stop himself freaking out via the kiss, which means they've probably swapped head spaces. Dean was freaking when he didn't know what this was about, but now he's got some context he sort of gets it. They can deal with that. He knows what he's swinging it. 

"You okay?" 

"No," Cas says, frowning at him, reaching forward to kiss him again. "Things are going to change. She will want to meet her, Dean. It might take some time, but she will.” 

"So we send Emma with her to supervise and privately freak out elsewhere," Dean says, "Doesn't change our set up, Cas, she can make room for her. Hell, she can make room for another sister and another frigging dad if he shows up and that's what she wants. Then say Emma gets inspired, you've got the email addresses of all her fellow cult sisters’ parents."1 

They’re not technically biologically her sisters (not that they can really talk about fucking biology), but they were all found in the same shitty situation. Two of them are actually her cousins. The whole thing was damn complicated, but as far as Dean’s concerned that much shared experiences counts for sisterhood, even if Emma doesn’t remember much of it. She was lucky. The oldest was five when she was pulled out. 

"Calling them her cult sisters doesn't help," Cas says, "And I've fallen out of contact with one of them." 

"She's still got six. That's probably enough to be going along with." 

"This is complicated." 

"Look at our families," Dean says, "Most consistent parent I've ever had isn't related to me and only really appeared when I was fifteen. You've got three brothers who don't talk and a Mom who only started visiting since we got kids. We're a motley crew of the messed up and fucked over Cas, but it's good. We'll work it out like we always do. Just might have to buy a bigger dining room table for Thanksgiving." 

"Okay," Cas says, staring at him without blinking, and the guy actually believes Dean him. Dean says everything going to be fine and Cas has just accepted it, like he’s got some implicit wisdom that means he’s got to be right. He’s not complaining about it, because having Cas trust him that much is awesome, but it’s still a little alarming sometimes. 

"Okay," Dean says, "You done with whatever work it was that's so damn important?" 

"I was printing off all the details of both of their adoptions and the various contacts details we have available to give to them both tomorrow, if they so wish.” 

"Of course you fucking were." Cas sends him a puzzled look. "You know you could have just said that 'stead of letting me getting pissed at you about doing work when we're in crisis mode." 

“I assumed you would work it out,” 

“Still not a mind reader,” Dean says, leaning over Cas to get his phone off the bedside table, because he’s just registered that he’s not pissed at Claire either. He asked her to tell him what it was about and she did, so he's not about to punish for having a crap week and not having the right kind of coping mechanisms to deal. "I’m un-grounding her,” Dean says, shooting off a text. It could probably wait until the morning but, whatever, she could probably use something good right now. "You trashed the cigarettes, right?" 

"Yes." 

He has to lean back over him to get the reply, only Cas makes it purposefully difficult so he winds up having to straddle him to get the damn phone. It’s no great hardship, really. His frigging husband wanting and monopolising his attention is fine, actually. 

There’s not enough hours in the day for it. 

"She should be asleep." 

"Give her a break, hard ass." Dean says, "She says thanks and that she feels the need to inform us she hasn't got her headphones on." 

"That's a great shame," Cas says, voice all deep and fucking gorgeous, and Dean is still not over that voice. 

"You sure you don't wanna skive tomorrow?" Dean asks. "Come down with a serious case of need-to-get-laid-itus." 

"If Claire is no longer grounded, she's going to Dustin’s afterschool and Emma is working till half six." Cas says, reaching forward to kiss him again. “Whilst I can’t take the day off, I’m sure I could arrange getting off early.” 

“Getting off early? Now you’re talking my language,” Dean grins. 

Cas rolls his eyes, smiles and kisses him again.

*

Dean's watching a TV by the time Cas is back, bulldozing through the door with his latest trench coat at ten past four. He already has two texted apologies from him, but that doesn’t mean that Dean isn’t totally bummed out that they’ve lost an hour of the time Dean thought they were going to have. 

"You're late.” 

"I know," Cas says, "I will make it up to you, Dean." 

"You okay? You stressing about Amelia again?" Dean asks, because his voice is all off. Obviously, the leaving work early plan was mostly about actually having sex, but if Cas isn’t _okay_ then he’d rather talk about that. 

"I missed you at work today," 

"You missed me?" Dean asks, raising an eyebrow, "What kind of sentimental bullshit is this?" Cas doesn't answer, but strips off his trench coat and folds himself under Dean's arm, tangling their fingers together. He's not usually so persistently tactile, so he must be serious about missing him which is, well, nice actually. 

"What are we watching?" 

"Fifty and Single," Dean says, running his fingers through Cas' bedhead. 

"That sounds traumatic." 

"Dunno, man. It's giving me some ideas. Maybe we should just be friends," 

"Assbutt," 

"Still beats being fifty and unhappily married," Dean says, "I'm guessing. Don't have any experience of that." 

Cas pulls him forward to kiss him. It's a strange angle, kind of awkward, but it's still good. He's not sure how kissing Cas can possibly still feel like a novelty some days, but it really does. 

"We really been screwing on sofas for nearly thirty years?" Dean asks, "And you still fucking miss me when you're at work?" 

"I wanted to hear your voice," 

"Could have called," Dean says, and kisses him again, moving so he’s better positioned to. "God, I love you." 

"There's still time," Cas says, voice lower than usual, "Before they get home." 

"Cas, we were having a chick flick moment here." 

"I apologise," Cas says, unbuttoning Dean's shirt. "I love you too, I am very proud of our thirty year relationship, I have vast swathes of warm fuzzy feelings in relation to this moment, one of which is the feeling that I would like you to fuck me." 

"You've been spending too much time with Claire." 

"Dean," 

"All right, all right," Dean says, shrugging his shirt off and leaning forward to cup Cas face and kiss him again. "Let's rock and roll." 

Cas rolls them over so he's on top because he's a little shit with a terrible sense of humour. 

“I wasn’t aware chick flick moments were allowed, anyway,” 

“I’m getting old, give me a break,” Dean mutters, debating the pros and cons of flipping them over again, but deciding that he can’t really complain about Cas pinning him to the sofa. 

“You’re not old yet,” Cas says, “Although I’m looking forward to it,” 

“Sentimental dork,” 

“We have a solid enough relationship that neither of our daughters blinked when you mentioned my past infidelity yesterday.” 

“I swear you used to be better at dirty talk than this,” Dean says, pushing Cas’ stupid suit jacket off his shoulders before working on his tie. If he had to wear a fucking tie to work it would be off the second he got back in his car, but Cas barely seems bothered by the damn thing at this point. 

“Dean,” Cas says, kissing him again, “We have made a stable enough environment that neither of them were _remotely_ phased. _Us_.” 

“Yeah, Cas,” Dean grins, “We’re awesome.” 

Of course, Claire gets home early from Dustin's when Dean's shirtless and pinned to the sofa whilst Cas is kissing his damn neck. Dean's groping his ass through his slacks and pulling him as close as possible and, well, as much as they’re essentially just making out with enthusiasm, he can in this instance understand Claire’s distress. Particularly because they’re too into the proceedings to notice until Claire's yelling "gross" from the sitting room door. 

“In our defence,” Dean yells at her receding footsteps, “You're not supposed to be home yet.” 

“On the _sofa?_ ” 

“Hey I paid for this sofa with my hard earned cash, I can do whatever I want on it,” Dean calls after her, reaching for his shirt, which is a real fucking shame. A new episode of Fifty and Single is starting on the TV (although Cas muted it earlier) and Cas looks debauched enough from the enthusiastic necking that Dean’s itching to finish their job. Damn. 

“You’re both disgusting,” Claire yells, then her bedroom door slams shut somewhere upstairs. 

“Perhaps it’s time to reinstall date night,” Cas says mildly, re-buttoning his own shirt. Dean only got to the third button, so it doesn’t take long. 

“We should at least watch the show,” 

“You want to watch Fifty and Single?” 

“Quit judging me, Novak, and come enjoy the stable environment we’ve created,” Dean says, reaching for the remote (which somehow wound up half way across the room) before joining him on the sofa again, this time a little less horizontal. “It’ll be aces,” 

Cas concedes without a word and, yeah, Dean’s so pumped about the rest of forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter just would not cooperate and it's nothing like it was supposed to be when I started but... well, this is what happened. Thank you for joining on me on the angst/fluff journey into the future. I hope you like Claire and Emma because I've fallen a little bit in love with them and that you've forgiven both Cas and Dean for being shitheads


End file.
